HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Make It a SAFER Halloween For Everyone!

Yes, readers, it's that time again: the streets will be filled with little demons...and fairies, and Freddies and Sarah Palins. No doubt, you've thought about taking the kids to a "Hell House" tonight to entertain them and keep them off the streets. After all, Halloween has gotten scarier. Just ask people in San Francisco's Castro district, who have had to give up Halloween festivities because of violence.

It's just possible, however, that the greatest threat to safety (future safety that is) is the church-run "Hell House" in your neighborhood. You see, while the usual Halloween Haunted House/Hell House tries to scare kids with the fantasies of the superstitious and the supernatural, church-sponsored Hell Houses try to scare kids with a form of REALITY.

Albeit a very skewed, very gruesome form of reality.

At a Hell House, a demon may escort you through scenes too gory for small children and too disturbing for young adults: a botched abortion of a cheerleader who dies and is headed to hell; the wedding of a gay couple, (the ceremony presided by a demon) the scene then shifting to one of the men dying of AIDS; a young girl goes to a rave, is given a "pill" then  gang raped (she also goes to hell). These and other scenes are graphically depicted before the end, when a moral is intoned and forgiveness of "sins" is offered. 

It's Scary ... and It Kills

We've already seen the fate of some kids who are bullied for being "different" or unpopular. And needless to say, the suicides of gay teens have been focused on by the media. What most people don't know, however, is that religious attempts to steer kids away from "sin" stigmatize as much as they warn: boys and girls have killed themselves over unwanted pregnancies, abortions, abusing drugs or alcohol, or a myriad of other perceived faults. Hells Houses also enable bullies and impound guilt. 

In a recent poll taken by the Public Religion Research Institute, almost two thirds of the American public blame religion in having a direct causal relationship to the latest spate of gay teen suicides:

Bottom line: Hell Houses are not as emotionally healthy as they think they are.

For the rest of this blogs articles on Hell Houses and demonizing:

Demonizing America, Part I: The UPDATES TELL THE STORY

Demonizing America, Part II: "Kill Them All! God Will Take Care Of His Kind!"

Demonizing America, Part III: SPECIAL REPORT - HELL HOUSES

Also:

Obama: It Gets Better...Hell House Ideology: IT GETS WORSE!

You're Right, Mr. Obama ...

MAKE IT A SAFER HALLOWEEN TONIGHT AND TOMORROW - PROTEST HELL HOUSES!!

HELL HOUSES ENABLE TEEN SUICIDES!

Two thirds of Americans think Religion contributes to gay teen suicides

Hell Houses: Read TheUpdates On OpEdNews!!

Protest Hell Houses!!  

The Last Two Articles Have Finally Appeared on OpEdNews!

Click The Link Below!

Better Late Than Never...I Hope!

There Was A Boy: The Latest Suicide Negates Tony Perkins' Credibility

 "There's no correlation between inacceptance of homosexuality and depression and suicide." 

- Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council

Joseph Jefferson was a gay activist who graduated from from New York City's Harvey Milk High School. He was a mentor and advocate for gay teen youth. His worked included GMAD - Gay Men of African Descent; POCC - People of Color in Crisis; and,  he helped to promote LGBT events for the NYC area. 


Joseph Jefferson committed suicide by hanging himself this past weekend. He was 26 years old.

The Christian Right has been trying to distance itself from the recent spate of gay teen suicides. And in their hurry to negate any thoughts of responsibility, their logic falls apart. The above statement by Tony Perkins of Family Research Council is, of course, ludicrous: EVERYONE knows that the demonizing of gays by religion has been a primary cause of teen suicides. But what makes Perkins' statement so immensely disingenuous is that he knows it. He even gets in a little demonizing by saying that teen suicides occur because they "know" they are "abnormal."

"These young people who identify as gay or lesbian, we know from the social science that they have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict." 

And who helps that propensity along? Encourages it, in fact.  Think about it.

THERE WAS A BOY



Although Joseph Jefferson was 26 years old, his last heart-breaking statements to his friends on Facebook shared the same thoughts of gay teens everywhere:
 

“I could not bear the burden of living as a gay man of color in a world grown cold and hateful towards those of us who live and love differently than the so-called ’social mainstream.’ Belonging is one of the basic human needs, when people feel isolated and excluded from a sense of communion with others, they suffer.

“I have been an advocate for my peers and most importantly youth because most have never had a deep emotional attachment to anyone. They don’t know how to love and be loved in return. The need to be loved can sometimes translate to the need to belong to someone or something. Driven by that need….. Most will do anything to belong.” 

"...To love and be loved in return." Yes, I got that too. Nat King Cole. "There was a boy..." Jefferson's words resonate with beauty and desperation: here was a man who was trying to help African-American gay youth to see that there was hope, even though he never really found that hope himself. He was like some person trapped in a burning house, screaming for everyone else to save themselves. Perhaps his desolation came from two sources: the Christian Right and the African-American community. Perhaps the hypocrisy was too great for him to bear after the Bishop Eddie Long scandal came out: he may have thought "Perhaps they're just out there to use us and abuse us."  


Many people in the Christian Right live in a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin fantasy world, so much so that they almost believe it. Almost. For down deep in their minds, hearts and souls is the knowledge that to most people sin and sinner are rarely separated, and loving the sinner in spite of the sin takes too much effort, too much courage. Hate is so much easier. Jesus Christ knew that when he told people to "love thine enemy. Be good to those who despise you." At the time of Roman occupation, loving the enemy was unthinkable., it was insane, it was treason.

The defense of Tony Perkins is totally unsustainable. the Christian Right's culpability in gay suicides is overwhelmingly obvious: Joseph Jefferson took his own life because Tony & Friends made life unbearable for him, because hypocrites like Bishop Eddie Long humiliated him, and because he could no longer stand the onslaught of hatred coming from a supposedly "Christian Nation."


There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise
Was he


And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"

Demonizing America - Part III: SPECIAL REPORT - HELL HOUSES - Causing Teen Suicides Or Rescuing Souls?

DEMONIZING AMERICA, Part 3: Prologue


The following two paragraphs are excerpted from the 2005 edition Hell House Outreach Kit by Pastor Keenan Roberts of New Destiny Church of Arvada, Colorado. While this kit may have been updated, the basic scenes are being played in Hell Houses across the country. 

* Gay Wedding ($45) — This energetic scene will give you another powerful weapon in your arsenal against the homosexual stronghold and the born-gay deception. The demon tour guide conducts the ceremony that actually involves a young married couple. (The wife dons masculine make-up for the necessary male look.) The tour guide pronounces them “husband and husband”. Then the scene utilizes a time warp to move several years into the future with one of the partners dying of AIDS as demon imps swarm into a hospital room. This package comes with the originally produced rock-n-roll wedding march CD, the air of evil background music CD and the death drum track also on compact disc.

* Gay/Lesbian Suicide ($45) — This scene creatively combines two cutting-edge issues into one script. The drama for the scene calls for a spiritual battle between the angel of the Lord and the demon tour guide. They wrestle for Jamie's intellect as she struggles with whether or not God has made her this way. This script captures an incredibly compelling exposé that unmasks the “born-gay” lie.

DEMONIZING THE DEMONIZERS

For once, I'm at a loss for cynical words. I can't demonize someone - simply because to do so would be pointless. People who are caught demonizing are already demonizing themselves. Hypocrisy is like that. 

Once when I was a kid, my dad took me and my cousin Pat to a "Haunted House", put on by the local Chicagoland flower-grower, Otto Amling. It had real actors in skeleton costumes who said "boo" a lot, and had a mechanical "Frankenstein" who lunged at you when you tried to go out the back door. I took it in stride as fun. Pat, however, did not. He held my father's hand so tight my father mumbled something about circulation. When we left, he was as white as a sheet. Pat was three years older than I was. I was nine.

With the spate of teen suicides caused by bullying, it is impossible for some people to see today's Hell Houses as anything but the worst demonizing force ever devised by man. Based on the morality plays of the Middle Ages, they take young people through vignettes as horrific as any Halloween film or venue. And even though they've been parodied and laughed at by others*, their purpose, they insist, is not to scare, but to save. And they are very, very specific about who and what they want today's youth to be saved from. 

I spoke to Pastor Keenan Roberts of New Destiny Church in Arvada, Colorado last week. Pastor Roberts has been selling "Hell House Outreach" kits to churches across the country for the past 19 years. His "Hell House" kits provide a full working script complete with suggestions on props, costumes sound effects. As a cottage industry, in fact, it has been very successful. 

To be fair, I won't quote Pastor Roberts extensively because as every good writer knows, quotes can be edited in such a way as to be very, well... demonizing. Instead I will cite a few key phrases and paraphrase what he believes about Hell House and the current situation.

Pastor Roberts' primary points were:

1. He does not have connections with churches who purchased hell house "kits" and scripts. Therefore, he does not know if any have edited their scripts considering the present situation of teen suicides.

2. People don't really understand Hell House and its purposes. He asked me to define "demonizing". "Our calling is to help people understand what the Bible says. We have choices - and choices that are outside of God's plan are sins."

3. A Hell House simply states that it does not condone homosexual behavior.

4. Media is unfair because it uses "filters of convenience," meaning that it uses one set of criteria and applies it to the whole concept of Hell House. He noted that media criticism was not pointed quite as much to the issues of pre-marital sex and abortion as to the issue of homosexuality.

5. Hell House should be considered a "rescue operation." "You can't point at us and say 'you're part of the problem.'"

6. "Don't shoot the messenger"

Pastor Keenan, I should relate, seemed very sincere in his efforts to impress upon me that what he was doing was right.

But if you look at the text above and the video below, you will now find out how difficult it is not to demonize Pastor Roberts.** A Hell House states more than "we don't condone homosexual behavior"; it states in big, bold letters BECAUSE YOU ARE IN SATAN'S GRASP, YOU ARE A SINNER AND WILL BE PUNISHED BY EVERLASTING HELL. Quite overshadows any message of love, doesn't it?

The most salient point in the entire Hell House script is the depiction of homosexuality as a bad (read: sinful and unhealthy) choice that is spread because activist homosexuals need to recruit young people as part of their "agenda." The immutability of this point cannot be stressed enough: anyone believing otherwise is an un-Christian liberal. Criticism about other aspects of the script are also met with scorn. (e.g.: parents across the country have voiced criticism concerning Hell Houses' violence. They are brushed aside as not knowing the true meaning of Hell Houses.) But the tenacity by which Hell Houses cling to the original script may be more indicative of the respect/power churches demand: alter the script in any way, and that power deflates.

HOW FAR WILL THEY GO?

The legends that sprung up from Columbine were tenuous as actual facts about the shootings began to trickle in. One legend, however, did not die - at least in the minds of Hell House producers: the legend of the martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. 


The legend was simple:  one of the gunmen supposedly asked Cassie if she believed in God, and when she replied "yes" he shot her. The media and Cassie's parents focused on that last moment extensively. The problem was, that's not what happened: 


wikipedia:

Most examinations of witness testimony state that Cassie was not asked anything before she was shot. According to witness Emily Wyant, who was hiding under a wood table with Cassie, Eric Harris said "peekaboo" before shooting Cassie, while Cassie continued to pray silently.It is believed the famous exchange actually took place between Klebold and Valeen Schnurr, and was mistakenly attributed to Bernall.

The Bernall's website still carries the legend and makes no attempt at hiding the fact that it is still up for sales of the book, She Said "Yes."


Salon. com, Sept. 30, 1999:

The belated media outing of the truth about Cassie Bernall raises questions about why the story took so long to find its way into print. Misty Bernall's book landed on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list at No. 14 this week, with 350,000 copies in print and more than 250,000 already sold, according to the publisher. In the past three weeks, the Bernalls have appeared on Today, 20/20 and Larry King Live, among others. The story has inspired a massive surge in Christian youth groups' recruitment around the country and overseas.

Hell Houses also play fast and loose with other issues: e.g., the abortion scene ends with the young girl DYING because of the abortion. Medical journals have consistently stated that about one girl in one MILLION ever expire from an abortion. Another point: prepared scripts have been edited to suit the ideas of each church. While some churches may prefer to tone down the violence and demonizing, some even ratchet it up, even including Muslims or other religious or ethnic groups they deem headed for eternal damnation. Pictures from the Freres  Corbusier performance show the abortionist wearing a yarmulke (Jewish skull cap).

LOVE THE SINNER



Some scholars believe that the proper exegesis of Christ's philosophy of love was that it took more courage to love your enemy than to hate him. He also knew that the concept of loving your enemy would be a hard sell - in fact, downright unpopular. 


It still is. In days of war, intrigue, terrorism and distrust, loving your enemy - or even those who are "different" - has never been harder. This brings about the question of culpability and its admission in regards to Hell Houses. You see, one small piece of demonization can make it nearly impossible to love the person at whom it is directed. And any extreme demonization can entirely cancel out all of the commands to love someone, particularly if those commands are voiced afterwards. In other words, no matter how many times someone tells you that God wants you to love someone, that plea has been rendered moot and senseless by the first disparaging word about them.


Telling the public that Hell Houses do not demonize and instead demonstrate love is almost ridiculous. I say "almost" because there are people who believe Hell Houses preach the "love-the-sinner" meme effectively. They must believe - if they are to support their church. And we must accept the fact that they exist, because to think otherwise would be dangerous:

A 2001 study published in the Journal of Psychology found that “the belief in an active Satan [is] directly related to intolerance toward gay men and lesbians.” Given that all of the gay and lesbian characters in Hell House scenes are condemned to hell by Satan and his demons, this research raises serious questions about the impact of Hell Houses on impressionable youth.

One upset parent wrote that Judgment Houses (aka Hell Houses) are just another form of child abuse:

It has been said that “hell serves the holy purpose of cradle to grave intimidation,” and this is exactly what that church is attempting to do. But for civilized people, including most Christian people, what they did can be considered child abuse. They can only be thankful that with the separation of church and state, child protective service agencies cannot do anything about it. 

A review from Newsweek of the Les Freres Corbusier New York production:

"It was a grotesque and shocking imagining of contemporary secular culture, an extreme version of the way some very conservative Christians may think the unsaved live."

 CBS Texas affiliate 2008:

"One skit is a girl on Facebook," says Houghteling. "She meets a friend and gets raped and the demon says she deserved it."...[Reporter] Houghteling tells CBS 11 News that the message Trinity Church is sending to the young members is that if you struggle with certain issues then God has no place for you."

BULLY ENABLERS

One of the most frequent taunts that are used against gay teens is, of course, "you're going to HELL!"  I should stop at this point, because the correlation to Hell Houses is so obvious. But it doesn't seem obvious to the producers and supporters of Hell Houses. The denial of Christian Right stalwarts like Pat Robertson and Tony Perkins of the increasingly strident Family Research Council has demonstrated that the rhetoric of any debate will be contentious. To them, demonization does not exist. Neither does the possibility of enabling bullies to torment students.

Fortunately, there are Christian groups across the country that have taken a stand against vehicles such as Hell Houses:

With clear implications for the Hell House message, the Council of Bishops, Elders and Christian Leaders, which represents organizations and congregations that reach 98 million Americans, has publicly stated that they are “united“united in [their] rejection of all forms of fear-based religion” and refuse to “cooperate with or support political or religious leaders who caricature and condemn the lives of gays and lesbians.”

THE NUMBERS ARE OUT THERE - SOMEWHERE

The only concrete numbers I have been able to come up with are from 2007: approximately 1.6 million people visited Hell Houses. “Hell House Kits” were distributed to 800 churches across the US and 18 countries. Some churches reported that their Hell Houses received 12,000 visitors per year and utilize as much as 300 people either as professionals or volunteers. Every year since 2007, the numbers have increased.

So have the number of teen suicides and reported instances of bullying in schools. Concerned parents and educators are going over past research and teen suicide statistics. The future may hold a surprise for supporters of Hell Houses. Until then, however, culpability is the predominant issue. Some people may have already asked themselves (as I have done): do the producers and supporters of Hell Houses honestly think they aren't culpable in any way? Can they take one more look at the scenes, the scripts, the props, the acting and say that teens could not in any way be affected in such a way as to contemplate suicide? Or contemplate bullying as an accepted behavior, especially if it's bullying someone who's "going to hell" anyway? Some Hell Houses have been driven to given advance warnings that emotional distress might result - before they go on with the performance! Some attending children are under 12 years old. Are Hell House churches so bent on tormenting youth into salvation that they will risk inflicting severe emotional stress? Do they care at all?

From Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council on the subject of gay teen suicides:

Despite how threatened they are by the truth, there is nothing more compassionate than trying to rescue people from a lifestyle that is physically and emotionally destructive. GLAAD doesn't see it that way. Just as they did with Matthew Shepard, they're exploiting Tyler Clementi's tragic death as a weapon to scare Christians into retreating--or, in this case, as a way to pressure the media to muzzle any opposition.

As you can see, Perkins is a master at demonizing, especially when he's defending himself: he never talks about any gay organization without framing it  in  "battlefield" terms.

So what do we have now? At best, we have a group of dedicated Evangelicals burying their heads in the sand for God. At worst, we have ...

Tony Perkins, Bryan Fisher and Lou Engle.

EPILOGUE:

If nothing else, I hope that I have conveyed that this is an urgent issue that must be addressed NOW. Just as some evangelicals see the Halloween season as a fleeting chance to save souls, others must take this chance to save lives. If you know of a Hell House in any area in the country, please contact your local media to investigate it and contact local child welfare organizations to help organize protests. It's vitally important.

UPDATE: Another gay suicide has been reported: Corey Jackson, of Warren, MI (Detroit), hanged himself last Tuesday. Corey was a 19 year-old sophomore at Oakland University. Police and friends denied that it was a consequence of bullying. PROBLEM: The portrayal of gays as "making a wrong choice" still sends a message to gay youth: "if you keep on being the way you are, you're going to hell."

*Landover Baptist Church has the Lake of Fire Dunking Booth.

**I am biased, to be sure: my 6-year stint at the AIDS Emergency Fund in San Francisco showed me then just who were the demonized and who were demonizing. In the one photo above, I might as well have been that demon who was talking to the young man in the hospital bed, the only difference being that I wasn't telling him that he was going to hell.

To read the first two parts of DEMONIZING AMERICA click HERE and HERE or go to The Devil and Dan Vojir

You're Right, Mr. Obama, It Gets Better - But Not If The Christian Right Has Anything To Say About It!!

You'll look back on the struggles you've faced 

with compassion and wisdom.

There's nothing wrong with your monitor. It's green because so many Christionists are puking up bile onto their screens and blogs and websites and desks and carpets and dogs. 

Stock tip: Buy stock in Resolve and Magikist Rug Cleaners (They're out of business? Damn!).

The President delivered an "It Gets Better Speech" last night. He got some kudos, but not enough from the LGBT community to make a dent in their disappointment. His DOJ put DADT back into play. It doesn't balance out. but there will be hell to pay nevertheless. And both the LGBT community and the President will suffer.

So now, what? 

As a diversion, it's time for the Tony Perkins "Homosexual Agenda Show!" What awful pun will he use for his first headline? The suspense kills. Then there will be the Bryan Fischer radio rant chanting "perverted president" "Christians are always right, "gays are nazis!" ("pssst: kill them!"). Concerned Women for America will release a statement like : "Of course, we want ALL children to be safe, but must we push the homosexual agenda on infants?" Southern Baptist ministers across the land will be nixing their Sunday sermons and feverishly drafting new ones to tell people that their Halloween Hell Houses will contain an "Abominable Obama" rainbow-colored monster. And FOX News ... will live for the next YEAR on this one. 

Yes, I feel sorry for the President. He was pressured to do the right thing, of course, but it still took a certain amount of courage to do it. He could have abstained by lauding Hillary Clinton's speech as sufficient. Still, some people in his own party may be distancing themselves from him even more than they have recently. The Democrats are so scattered right now, you 'll hear groans amongst the faint cheers. To some, Obama may have shown the wrong time to deliver compassion.

Compassion. Seriously, that's a word that the Christian Right has now taken to demonizing as a soft, wimpy word, not commensurate with the bold measures needed to "Take Back America" from the godless secularists. Ironically, however, compassion will be the word the Right will need to adopt before looking totally hard-hearted. It will need to convolute the definition to mean something, well, less compassionate and more boot-strapsier.

"We've got to dispel the myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage-that it's some inevitable part of growing up. It's not."

This is when the Right will turn and say "yes it is!" Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle are shouting "man it up!" The red states will say "he's teaching our kids to be sissies." 


Compassion will be banned from the conversation. If there is a conversation. But instead it will be a one-sided bray from the Right, backed up by righteous indignation. 


Yes, I also feel sorry for the LGBT community. The bullies may win the day: after all, they still have Hell Houses to give the bullies justifiable support. After Oct. 31st, we may wake up to a spate of gay bashing the likes of which we've never seen since the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic.


Just a thought.

Obama: It Gets Better ....... Hell House Ideology: IT GETS WORSE!

"You'll look back on the struggles you've faced with compassion and wisdom."

Tonight, President Barack Obama delivered a message to the LGBT community - one that it has been waiting for. 

You are not alone. You didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything to deserve being bullied. And there is a whole world waiting for you, filled with possibilities. There are people out there who love you and care about you just the way you are.

I can just see Tony Perkins FURIOUSLY typing away right now.

"Let's see ... 
a 'homosexual agenda' , yeah gotta get that in somewhere. 
'Caving in' yeah, that's good. 
'who's the bully now?' ...doesn't make sense, but anyway...
ah... 'giving way to socialist ideologies
'... 'slap in the face to people of faith'
...'re-affirmed his commitment to perversity' 
Damn! I'm good!...


OK, let's settle down to very serious business: this latest spurs me forward in condemning Hell Houses and prompting protests.


Remember: in the hearts of compassionate Americans, IT GET'S BETTER, but in the church halls of Hell House theologians: 

IT GETS WORSE!!!

 

Where Are The F*ckin' HELL HOUSES? !!

Lat at night and I still can't find a list or a hint of the horrible, mind-bending HELL HOUSES!!

Hell Houses To Gay Teens: It DOESN'T Get Better - It Gets WORSE!!

 

MUCH WORSE!!

Special Report

While Dan Savage's bid for the minds of the country's gay teens has taken America by storm, another bid for their souls is in its 19th year: the church-sponsored Hell House. Initiated by Jerry Falwell in then70s, the Halloween-themed attraction has scared thousands (some say hundreds of thousands) of teenagers into believing that what they feel about themselves is sinful. 

This site will try to keep you posted every day (if I can) about Hell Houses, their effects and their locations. Please tell your friends to contribute by telling us of locations and any experiences. 

Thanks,

Dan Vojir

Below are some scenes from actual Hell Houses. They are offensive and destructive to all teens.

This has got to stop. I don't know how we can stop it, but it must stop.

Demonizing America - Part 2: "Kill Them All! God Will Take Care Of His Kind!"

Like it or not, the concept of bullying has been with man since the very beginning of his existence. We called it "survival of the fittest," to rationalize terrorizing the weaker species. During ancient times, bullying took the form of slavery. It took the form of victors lording it over vanquished: male rape was seen as an excellent form of bullying as well as slavery, which, if one thinks about it, is perhaps the ultimate form of bullying. In the Bible,  the ultimate bully was embodied in Goliath, the man-mountain whom the Philistines sent out to daily harass and taunt the Hebrew armies. Some people argue, however, that the ultimate bully was the God of the Old Testament. Israel was His schoolyard. Look what He did to poor, defenseless Job!

On a bet with Satan.

Size and strength characterized bullies whether in personal size or number of soldiers in an army: Napoleon and Hitler were considered bullies by the relatively defenseless Eastern European countries: when Neville Chamberlain waved the paper treaty with Hitler in front of the Britons and declared "peace in our time,"  the Czechs cowered with the thoughts of the bully Nazi army  - which did, in fact, march into Czechoslovakia days later.

Whatever the form, however, bullying was always a state of the strong ruthlessly handling the weak.

Religious bullying is not new: if you think of one sect purposely taunting, terrorizing, then ultimately killing off another sect as bullying, then you're right. The first case of western civilization genocide was the bullying, then annihilation of the Cathars of Southern France. They were different than anyone else, wore different clothes, worshipped not in churches but out in fields, did not eat meat, did not believe in hierarchy such as bishops and were extremely good to their neighbors. Naturally, the pope hated them.

To publicize their heresy, they were forced by the Church to wear yellow crosses sewn onto their tunics (demonstrating that Hitler wasn't very original) and routinely had their hands cut off, the only reason being that the church considered them heretics. Their numbers continued to grow despite the vicissitudes imposed on them, until the pope had a plan: get together with the king of France, Louis the VIII,  take their lands and simply eradicate them. That's when the battle cry above was born: while beseiging the city of Beziers, one of Louis' commanders asked the papal legate how he could tell the 200 Cathars from the rest of the 15,000 Christian citizens of Beziers. The legate's answer went down in history: "Kill them all - God will take care of his kind." Louis and Clement's strategy claimed approximately 120,000 lives over a period of some 20 years, becoming the first genocide in modern history. It was known, of course, as the Albigensian "Crusade."* 

Revisionist "historians" of Christianity always seem to overlook the Albigensian Crusade, perhaps because it not only stained the church of the Middle Ages but because it also gave rise to another dark era of religious bullying: The Inquisition. For hundreds of years, men like the legendary Torquemada  carried out the bullying of Jews and Moors (Muslims) in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and scattered places across the rest of Europe. 

I remember the evening I went to see the film adaptation of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. A nun was holding a makeshift sign that said "Lies, lies, lies!" But while the movie focused on the Church organization, Opus Dei, it did not touch upon the Albigensian Crusade to any substantial degree. That was, to me, the typical philosophy touted by almost all of America's religious leaders: never admit to anything and never, ever apologize. And if you have to apologize, do it when people won't remember what you're apologizing for. The Vatican recently apologized to a very dead Gallileo for imprisoning him, and the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for its part in the institution of slavery 140 years after the U.S. condemned and abolished the inhumane practice.

Just how many religious people in America know of the "dark side" of their religion?  The percentage would be closer to "0" than you think. Today's religion and yesterday's history aren't exactly friends, which is why we're seeing revisionists cropping up, so that people of faith need not apologize for anything. One wonders if people actually know about the first Christian theologian - Tertullian - and his last-minute conversion to Montanism or that many of the Vandals and Visigoths sacking Rome were Arian Christians.  How they would react to the stories about the concentration camps for pagans in Skythopolis, Syria?  Or the persecution of heretics? And for the last hundred years little has been made about Martin Luther's horrendous anti-Semitism (he wrote the seminal work, On The Jews and Their Lies)

Other instances of religious demonizing, then bullying, were the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (40,000 "heretical" French Protestants massacred in one day), Native American Indian slavery ("ungodly heathens" forced to build and work on the California Missions - approximately 50,000), and Chatila (massacre of 1500 Muslims by Christian Phalangists). Bullying on a continuous scale came in the form of The Crusades (millions of Jews and Muslims killed in the an untold number of major wars, minor wars and massacres), Charlemagne's forced conversions of the Saxons (legend of Widukind) and in later years, the Russian pogroms and massacres of Jewish villages and settlements.

The worst incident at demonizing in history?  There are so many, but arguably the most vile was the "Blood Libel" of the Jews, so strongly entrenched into the European psyche that it took hundreds of years to convince Christians that Jews did not kill gentile children to drink their blood for secret ceremonies. (BTW, this gave rise to the Jewish Legend of the Golem)

DEMONIZING PWAs

Many people were demonized during the "Age of AIDS" (1982 - 2000).. PWAs ( People With AIDS -primarily gay men) were the new lepers since during the first years medical establishments and health organizations were uncertain about how contagious the virus was. There were a few faith-based agencies in San Francisco during the beginning and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles stepped up to the plate in 1986, but so very many churches abstained from doling out compassion. They just weren't up to the courage of Father Damien.

The Christian Right's eagerness to demonize gays, politicians and non-Christians became evident with the like of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's 700 Club. Of course, statements from people like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms didn't hurt either:

Americablog:

Sen. Jesse Helms says the government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct," The New York Times reported Wednesday....

Pat Robertson:

- I have a zero tolerance for sanctimonious morons who try to scare people.

- I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife and the only thing they did was kiss.

Such was the fervor of the Moral Majority at the time, that it seemed as if they danced in the streets while people were dying in the streets: "Thank you God, you have sent a plague to our enemies."

THE LAST HOLDOUT?

Probably the most obvious (and the most vicious) holdout as far as demonizing PWAs is concerned is the powerful Southern Baptist Convention. Almost thirty years after the start of the epidemic, the SBC still cannot point to the sponsorship of any faith-based agency dealing with AIDS ...in this country. They lauded Mike Huckabee in 1996 when he wanted to quaranteen PWAs (the casual contact theory had been disproven years befor then, but Huckabee still pushed the quarnateen - to his own embarrassment years later). Today, they still follow Jesse Helms dictum that helping AIDS victims in Africa was fine because they were "all heterosexuals" while all AIDS victims in America were perverted sodomites.***

Next Up: 

Demonizing America - Part 3:  HELL HOUSES - Causing Teen Suicides Or Rescuing Souls?

* Scholar Steven Runciman wrote:

"High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed ... the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God".

 **"That massacre, said Pope Gregory XIII, gave him more pleasure than fifty Battles of Lepanto, and he commissioned Vasari to paint frescoes of it in the Vatican"."

***I may be wrong on this since my research is over a year old. 

Demonizing America - Part I: RECENT UPDATES TELL THE STORY

How they demonize. 

Who they demonize. 

Why they demonize. 

- A Four-Part Series

As a rule I define Christof***cists as existing in two groups: the Elmer Gantrys (Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, Creflo Dollar, Rod Parsley, etc.) who are snake oil salesmen in love with their own snake oil; and, the Elmer Fudds, the gullible and unwitting followers of the Gantrys, but no less dangerous since Fudd's the one with the gun.

                                                      - The Elephant In The Room, OpEdNews, 02/06/09


wikipedia:

In colloquial usage, the term demonization is used metaphorically to refer to propaganda or moral panic directed against any individual or group.

We've seen the results: America is becoming a nation of the bullies and the bullied. For Religious Right groups and media personalities, for gubernatorial candidates and city councils, demonizing rhetoric is the weapon of choice to harass, discriminate, degrade and (sometimes) kill the people they think are a drain on their society. And although the recent spate of teen suicides in the country seems limited to issues of sexual orientation, demonization has seeped into the public consciousness and spilled over into issues of politics, race, immigration and class struggles. The "bully pulpit" has become firmly entrenched in our American psyche and it shows no evidence of abating. In fact, it's escalating. 

In the last year, we saw a new symptom of demonizing become part of our legal lexicon: righteous assassination. The term applies mostly to people who perceive someone's "immorality" to be evil and detrimental to the rest of the country. Byron Williams, the would-be terrorist against the ACLU and the Tides Foundation was about to commit "righteous assassination" when he was stopped on California's Interstate 80 outside of Oakland, CA. He mentioned inspiration from FOX-News and Glenn Beck (read the UPDATE below). And before that incident, we were horrified at a shooting at a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, TN because the accused "targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal social policies." 

Demonization works.

Tony Perkins and his Family Research Council have been very busy juggling demonizations of President Obama, DADT, the "gay agenda," health care reform, everyone "liberal," "activist judges" and, well, the list goes on and on; so it might seem that FRC is the only organization doing the demonizing. WRONG. It only seems that way, because the FRC has been quicker and more vocal. The other demonizers are still out there in full force, taking notes from Perkins. Case in point: what Perkins and the FRC did in the last 24 hours shows its dedication to A-1 demonizing:

DADT UPDATE:

The ruling by a Federal district judge that the policy of DADT in the military is unconstitutional has garnered quick response from RR bullies across the country.From the FRC:

Once again, homosexual activists have found a judicial activist who will aid in the advancement of their agenda.

"Homosexual activist", "judicial activist", "agenda." These are demonizing buzz-words coined by Mr. Perkins himself. They may not seem as powerful as other words, but one must realize that Perkins has been using these words in the context of "destruction" of family values, "destroying" America and "demoralizing" lovers of liberty. And Perkins has used "agenda" ever since he produced his pseudo-documentary "The Gay Agenda" in 1996. This putrid piece of anti-gay propaganda is still making the rounds of churches, proving that demonization can be profitable.

And Perkins' demonizing buzz-words will be aped by people like Bryan Fischer and Pat Robertson (the judge, of course, signed a pact with the devil).

Teen Suicide UPDATE:

Another gay teen-related suicide occurred in Norman, OK. This one apparently as a result of a city council meeting where anti-gay sentiments were strongly voiced. Zach Harrington, 19, committed suicide one week after he attended a Norman City Council meeting during which residents of Norman expressed displeasure at having Norman declare October as LGBT History Month.

Tulsa World:

[Van Harrington] feels his son may have glimpsed a hard reality at the Sept. 28 council meeting, a place where the same sentiments that quietly tormented him in high school were being shouted out and applauded by adults the same age as his own parents... Some members of the audience even suggested that any council members voting in favor of the proclamation may have trouble getting re-elected.

Sometimes the demonizers turn the tables and re-demonize: Tony Perkins recently reacted to the stories of gay teen suicides by relaying faulty and erroneous statistics showing that gays have greater mental health problems than heterosexuals in a WaPo op-ed piece:

[H]omosexual activist groups like GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) are exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals, but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family. There is an abundance of evidence that homosexuals experience higher rates of mental health problems in general, including depression. However, there is no empirical evidence to link this with society's general disapproval of homosexual conduct.

But there is evidence: Tony Perkins and all his minions have been busy demonizing homosexuals so much it's amazing that we don't have more teen suicides than we do. (NOTE: the latest suicides are only a part of the larger picture - teen suicide rates have been rising for years).

And his tactics are just as nefarious: the sources he cites have been critical  about Family Research Council's free-handed jumbling of their research and statistics.

FLORIDA GAY ADOPTION BAN UPDATE:

Even though it has been only three hours into this writing, you KNOW that demonizing will take place concerning the latest news: (read Pam's House Blend for the full story)

“Florida has today done grave harm to the well-being of vulnerable children who will be raised in homes with role models who cannot provide them with the true vision of what family life should be,” Matt Sprigg, Family Research Council

That was FRC's last demonizing response to repealing the ban. 

Of course, we have yet to hear what the Perkins cabal has to say about the Washington Post's interview with domestic terrorist Byron Williams:

Glenn Beck UPDATE: 10/12/10 - 11:40 AM ET

Glenn Beck's nemesis, Media Matters, has just released an in-depth interview with Byron Williams, the man who engaged in a shootout with police on California's I-80 Interstate in Oakland when it was discovered that he intended to kill people at the ACLU and Tides Foundation in San Francisco. Previously, in an Oct. 6th interview, Williams stated that Glenn Beck did not coax him to violence, but the just-released audio interviews reveal the extent Beck had indeed demonized the Tides Foundation and the ACLU. Columnist Dana Millbank, writing for the Washington Post conducted the interviews:

Examiner. Com:

The columnist calls Beck an “enabler” and says the FOX host is dangerous because  “his is the one voice in the mass media that validates conspiracy theories held by the unstable.” 

Byron Williams was the perfect example of an Elmer Fudd. He was someone willing to do whatever the RR bullies and Glenn Beck wanted him to do: act on their rhetoric without being directly implicated.

Up next: The long history of demonizing.

Hey Guys, Please Help Out!!

I really want to take this chance to say THANKS to people who follow this little blog o' mine. I know you're out there and you're the reason I keep on writing. I'm sorry I'm so inconsistent: posting daily articles is something I just am not able to do. Furthermore, blogging the particular subjects of religion and politics is not easy: it takes time and research and effort (especially with the graphics - not that good, but they help me lighten things up a bit).

So this is a plea to anyone who likes this blog to please spread the word about it. If you can post something about it on your Facebook page, that would be awesome. Better yet, recommend that your friends get it automatically through an RSS feed so they don't have to go to it and check constantly whether or not something new has been posted.

As you know, the articles are also submitted to OpEdNews, getting really good responses (according to page views and ratings) and they usually wind up being in the top ten articles (in one week, OpEdNews publishes 350 top-notch articles!), but I'd really like to see more encouraging traffic to the site.

Again. Thanks for all your support. I'll always try to give you the truth in a light-hearted way.

Dan

Compassion to Glenn Beck?

Is he asking for it?

NewsCore - Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck announced on his radio show Friday that he would be taking a short leave of absence next week for health reasons...Without giving many details, Beck told his listeners that his announcement was "not bad news, it is just a transition period" and asked for their prayers.

Isn't praying for someone showing a form of compassion? Isn't it hypocritical to ask for prayers after showing contempt for compassion? If you answered yes to both questions, you might be wondering what Glenn Beck is thinking right now. 

Don't get me wrong. If Glenn Beck is ill, we should still show compassion and pray/hope that he gets well. Compassion for human illness and suffering should negate all feelings of animosity. But the fact remains that his own compassion for human suffering is sorely lacking: mocking a person whose house has burned down, no matter what the circumstance, is acutely unfeeling, especially after knowing that beloved pets were killed in the fire.*

There is a thin, but still palpable, parallel in all of this: the cold-hearted non-compassion displayed by the Christian Right during the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic. Over 65,000 people died agonizingly before the first faith-based AIDS agency was established outside of San Francisco (in the Episcopal archdiocese of Los Angeles). Most of them died  in the arms of friends, compassionate strangers ...or alone. Southern Baptists in particular showed their disdain for people with AIDS: they have yet to establish a faith-based AIDS agence here in the U.S. (they have, however, established ones in Africa in order to show their "compassion").

O.K., I've beaten that sentiment to death. I won't mention it again.

At least not in this article.

What has been particularly gauling to progressives is the outpuring of support for Glenn Beck's mocking of Mr. Cranick's tragedy. Beck's view of "compassion" has put it on the par with "social justice" - something he claims we should all run away from. Even though he may have been emulating the AFA's Bryan Fischer (letting the house burn was "the Christian thing to do."), the mere fact that he considered taking a mocking stance displayed a hard-heartedness which his ubiquitous tears belie. Glenn Beck cries for the country, but not necessarily for the people in it. His mockery was just as bad (if not worse) as Pat Robertson's we-must help-Haiti-even-though-it-sold-its-soul-to-the-devil statement. As in these cases, contempt will always overshadow compassion.

In a very real sense, Beck and  his supporters are showing contempt for one virtue that has made America what it has been to the rest of the world: the statement upon the Statue of Liberty attests to that. Both Beck and Fischer now point out to us that this virtue has been a detriment, a curse even, by making the country too soft on the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free. 

And the disdain doesn't stop with tardy subscription payments or illegal immigration: moreover; it covers rights to equality: women's rights, gay rights, even Muslim rights (to worship freely). The Right's disgust of these rights is always a slap in the face to American ideals. What is disturbing is that that particular rebuff is getting more frequent as we get nearer to voting for it. Yes, there is evidence of hard-heartedness on this year's November ballot: consider the uproar over legislation effecting Missouri's "puppy mills." Perhaps Dominionism is creeping up on us and the Republican Party is only too happy to make way for it. And with Eric Cantor's joking statement, the party is showing its disdain for "compassionate conservatism":

Think Progress:

Mr. Cantor believes the American-Jewish community is overwhelmingly Democratic because Jews “are prone to want to help the underdog.”

Again, with the Glenn Beck question: should we show compassion to him during his illness? 

Of course. After all, it's the American thing to do. 

But for how long? 

* Humane Society: “It is inexcusable that three dogs and a cat would have to die in such a horrible way, with firefighters ordered to not intervene, because of an unpaid $75 service fee.