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!

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.

Truly Scary, Part I: Through A Halloween Hell House - Via Child Abuse, Forced Conversion, Sarah Palin, ObamaCare And Religious Intolerance.

Each short skit at a Hell House is equal to a mini snuff movie.

- Secular Parent Magazine

Those of us who hail from the Stone Age (aka The Fabulous Fifties) remember Halloween as a time of fun (but serious) costumes and as much candy as you could puke.

It was fun until someone put a razor blade in some poor kid's apple. After that, there was nothing left for Halloween to become but religiously political (or vice versa).

And that's when the concept of Hell Houses began. I've written about them before - those places that try to bring fear to minds and souls via religious bigotry. A bigotry that is actually franchised by one Keenan Roberts, an Assemblies of God pastor in Colorado who originally hailed from Roswell, New Mexico (yes, THAT Roswell, of alien sightings fame and legend). BTW: the Assemblies of God Church in Wasilla, AK is the church where Sarah Palin was prayed upon by witch hunter Thomas Muthee.

OMG! Roberts - Assemblies of God - Roswell - Sarah Palin - Thomas Muthee - witches - Halloween! Okay, that's the totally disjointed reasoning of a Hell House producer, which, by the way, number in the thousands across the country. Last year's sale of Hell House kits topped 3000.

The best article written to date on Hell Houses is one by a OpEdNews writer, Theresa "Darklady" Reed and aptly titled

Halloween "Hell Houses" Act Out Depraved Christian Wet Dreams

According to ReligiousTolerance.org, a typical Hell House experience includes graphic and factually inaccurate re-enactments of such things as the murder of Columbine High School student Cassie Bernall's by a fellow student who allegedly killed her for her faith. Joining this scene are those depicting innocents being sacrificed by Wiccans during Satanic rituals, demon possession brought on by exploring the occult, witches forcing teens to commit murder, and drunk drivers slaughtering their passengers. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 have provided modern Hell House organizers with new scenarios to present, as well.

Shouldn't Hell Houses be known more commonly as Hate Houses? Are they effective in promoting hatred? After you read this post, check out the next installment on this series.

From ReligiousTolerance.org:

The Rev. Ballard's "Hell House" in Warren County OH was criticized by Doreen Cudnik, executive director of Stonewall Cincinnati. She said that the display "is out of touch with AIDS in the year 2000. To say gay equals AIDS equals burning in hell has the dangerous potential to lead to hate crimes against the gay community."

A Christian radio station in Fairfield, OH terminated ads which promoted Kings Point Church of God's Hell House because the ads invited listeners to "come see the funeral of a homosexual AIDS patient." The Cincinnati Enquirer said that the ads were "blatant gay bashing."

As with anything extreme, Hell Houses open themselves for over-the-top parody. The internet's Landover Baptitst Church has been lampooning Hell Houses for years (they never actually have a Hell House, but describe their's on the website. Last year's Landover Baptist Hell House proffered

"Real Corpses from Turkey's Earthquake that would have been wasted in mass graves, will (sic) frozen and delivered to Landover Baptist Church, to be used in the Godly purpose of winning souls!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theresa-darklady-reed/halloween-hell-houses-act_b_139825.html

This year, however, Landover Baptist goes straight to the jugular of Christofascists by presenting not a Hell HOUSE, but an Obama Care Hell HOSPITAL!

Visitors will line up and be seated inside Hell Hospital's filthy waiting room, which is the size of nearly two football fields. "This is REAL TERROR," says Pastor. "Visitors will wait for hours -- sometimes days! -- just like they'll wait in one of Obama's hospitals just to get a used Band-Aid. Lead paint will be peeling off the walls, cathode ray televisions will be spooling hours of PBS specials on the Obama family's clothing and eating habits, all while hundreds of Baptist University students painted to look like Mexicans wearing little pink ears and snouts mingle with the crowd, dancing around sombreros and coughing into the faces of white children, passing on swine flu and Chlamydia," Pastor continued. "It is a real rip-roaring production!"

And...

The large community pool previously used to clean retards and now posing as a mandatory water abortion clinic will also double as baptismal pool.

A signed medical waiver is supposedly required before entering the Landover Baptist Hell House, which, among other things, hopes to bring salvation to "teenagers influenced by the poison of negro music."

This is not only satire, but BRILLIANT satire because it skewers Christofascists and politics at the same time.

Of course, no one could deliver sharp objections to Hell Houses like atheist Richard Dawkins. The video below demonstrates that Pastor Keenan Roberts can't really answer most of the questions with anything else but "That's what I believe." Roberts comes off as the typically unyeilding preacher who (secretly) revels in producing such gruesome scenes.

Perhaps Hell Houses really do act out the dark side of the Christofascist psyche. Then again, if there is another side other than the dark one, we've never seen it.

Just a thought.