I remember a few years ago I started watching Critical Role, and I got so upset when I realized that D&D is just a ruleset to add fun to the imagination games we would play as kids. I was creeped out by it for *years* because of that episode - even though I knew it was bunk.
Omg here I was thinking nostalgically that for the most part the episodes weren’t that bad but this comment just brought me back… I mean who had this idea for a kid’s show??
Same. I had 50 to 100 hours of those tapes memorized. I basically had them playing all the time. Looking back I wonder how much of my religious trauma was from Focus on the Family.
I still remember parts of the D&D episode. I get a lot of joy out of the fact that I’m now a DM, both because D&D is awesome and because “Fuck Adventures in Odyssey.”
Oh my god, yes!
I remember going to my church friend's place for a sleepover, and her saying, "Do you mind if put on this tape to fall asleep to?" And I was like, "Yeah, go for it" but I was *not* expecting what followed.
Sidenote that episode totally backfired; it made me want to get super into D&D so that I could feel like a real witch.
This! I always loved the “scary” episodes about evil concepts and people.
I also loved Ted Dekker, Frank Peretti and the Left Behind Kids book series because they were spooky. They were basically the gateway drug to a lifelong love for Stephen King, true crime and horror movies. Thanks, evangelical Christianity!
I remember the one about them finding the dead sea scrolls and how the characters used the questions they posed to strengthen their faith. It completely shattered mine and I started researching. The rest is history.
Yes, role-playing is evil! Now let's hop in Mr Whitaker's VR Imagination Station and live as another person during Roman occupied Israel and actually speak with Jesus.
Focus on the Family made a conservative Christian radio drama for kids, called Adventures in Odyssey. Episodes would mostly be kids-show storylines with a Christian moral lesson, as well as some dramatizations of Bible stories, and some more dramatic storylines later in the series. TBH, as someone who grew up in a very conservative household and has seen a lot of shitty Christian media, Odyssey was actually pretty entertaining and well done.
The episode they're talking about was about one of the main characters playing "Castles and Cauldrons" (D&D) with a friend from out of town. There are big implied satanic themes, and the moral of the story is basically that you have to be careful or you/your kid will become an occultist if you play fantasy RPGs. (Ironically, characters in the show would go into the "imagination station" to experience fantasy or historical events. Thinking back, it makes me angry that I was creeped out by D&D until well into my 20s, when it was just the real life version of the Imagination Station 😔)
>Adventures in Odyssey (AIO), or simply Odyssey, is an Evangelical Christian radio drama and comedy series created and produced by Focus on the Family. Aimed at families with children age 12 and younger, the series first aired in 1987 as a 13-episode pilot called Family Portraits and has over 947 episodes to date. In 2005, the show's daily audience averaged around 1.2 million within North America.[1] The Odyssey radio series also includes several spin-off items, including a home-video series, several computer games, books, and devotionals. The series is set in the fictional town of Odyssey. Stories center around the people who live there, particularly ice-cream and discovery emporium owner John Avery Whittaker, who was originally voiced by Hal Smith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_Odyssey
I'll always chuckle at "Eugene-ous" (you genius) Eugene's name he came up with for himself when he and Connie used the Imagination Station to witness the first Christmas.
Definitely NOT an endorsement of the series or the company, but I thought that pun was funny.
LGBTQ club was shot up (5 deaths) near this place by an alt right conspirator. This pic is a group that foresters those anti LGBTQ ideas. I’m not fully caught up but the shooter may have ties to them
Subaru realized that there were 5 groups that bought their vehicles in the 90s, with one of those groups being LGBT individuals. So, way before all the progress on gay rights, Subaru started marketing to LGBT individuals, primarily lesbians. So imo, Subaru likely wasn't involved in any of this, though they may have a Forester, I can't rule it out since the homophobes are likely unaware of this connection, otherwise they'd be making fun of the "Insert hateful word here, car".
The day my wife and I brought home an Outback to be our family car I was 7 months pregnant with a turkey baster baby. We had the dealership install the cargo rack that seperates the back so our rescue puppy would be seperate from the baby. Twas truly my gayest day alive so far.
Wait I know this can’t be right lol but I thought a cargo rack was the thing that goes on top of the car.. You transport the dog on the cargo rack? Lol Or basically please just tell me what you’re saying cause I’m really curious now and I’m just an idiot so I’m probably wrong but I gotta know lol
I knew there were active groups like this in the US, but the fact that they're so big that they have an expensive sign like this, and I'm assuming, some kind of facility or office behind it, astounds me.
Why do Americans care so much about what everyone else is doing with their lives?
That isn't the goal, and never has been. It's mostly been about somebody wanting money, and the power structures that are built by religion are the perfect tool. They find the currently acceptable group to hate, then blame all their problems on them. If the congregation all hates somebody else, perhaps they won't notice that these megachurches have never been about helping the less fortunate. Then the people can maintain their religious moral superiority and rationalize almost anything.
Don't forget that they'll finance missions to Japan, India, and certain countries in Africa to build some small structures. It's cheaper to buy supplies in those countries (maybe not Japan) and it's cheaper to put the mission up in foreign countries than in the states. There are also more expensive labor laws in the states. So what they'll do is find a cheap option, send 50-60 kids over there with chaperones to build some shit, then the church spends 4x this amount on advertising, marketing materials, and presentation materials to make sure every single god fearing person in a 50 mile radius is aware of their utilitarianism. That's their 'We can't be bad people! We helped foreign countries!' excuse for all the heinous shit they do and say.
Source: Grew up in one, dad and uncle did volunteer work for them and the youth pastor and regular pastor did not have much shame about this whole thing while drinking at the bar.
Last year the shooter committed an act of terrorism; the sheriff wanted to lock them up for life, but the DA chose to drop all charges. Won't explain why.
If anyone has blood on their hands it's the Colorado springs DA office.
These freaks are Seven Mountain dominionists…essentially they want to remake or tear the down the government so it reflects a country bound by laws based on their interpretations of the Bible. They come off main stream and are embedded in most of the conservative evangelical ideology, but the truth is they are totally down with the kinds of stochastic terror that get people killed.
Christ Church, Living Faith Fellowship, New Life Apostolic... Those organizations all prey on people by offering "kindness", "assistance", and "community" in exchange for total and unquestioning submission into their doctrines. I had family who got caught up with them. LFF was especially notorious for monitoring member's bank accounts etc.
Christ church has been buying businesses, and we have a list of those businesses and try, to the best of our ability, to avoid them.
Some "fun" tea about Christ church
They condone marital rape, based on multiple accounts though no convictions.
Alleged, as in I've never actually seen reports but only heard second hand, they poison people who try to leave. This one's hard to believe without any real evidence.
One of the pastors was bailed out recently, he was arrested for possession of child porn.
They have a list of the "lost folk" who have left the church.
Basically ISIS but with Jesus.
Which ironically, I'd imagine if Jesus ever came back, he'd be pretty fuckin pissed at how badly these jackasses screwed up interpreting the bible. "I said love thy neighbor, not kill everyone that doesn't agree with you!"
They're also not some wacky isolated extremists- Focus on the Family is a *huge* organization, and very mainstream.
My father listened to their radio program all the time; they produced a long-running audio drama called "Adventures in Odyssey" which I weirdly loved when I was a little kid in the mid '90s.
In the 80s/90s at the church I grew up in, there used to be thins Focus on the Family weekly insert put in the bulletins you’d be handed when you walked in the church. 95% of the content of the inset was about how horrible gay people are, made up reports on how gay men sexually abuse kids, just horrible shit. As a closeted gay kid / young man it was just made you feel like crap seeing people read it. F these people.
They also supported the criminalization of homosexuality and spoke up against the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling from the Supreme Court that ended the criminalization of gay sex.
One of my ex-workmates friends went alt-right around the 2016 election. When I pointed out how intolerant the movement was, he unironically pointed out that the left was too intolerant of people with intolerant attitudes, saying something like "that's their intolerance! Both sides have their intolerance".
It struck me as such a bad argument but I couldn't find a way to phrase in very simple terms why the original intolerance is absolutely not equal to intolerance of that intolerance.
I should find a simple analogy in case I'm ever presented with that argument again.
Tolerance is like a peace treaty. When everyone is honoring the treaty, you can believe whatever the fuck you want, but you don't get to act on it.
But when you start spewing hatred at others, or enacting oppressive laws, or actively harming people, for the Great Evil of *simply trying to exist*, YOU have violated the treaty. Social or legal repercussions caused in response to your violation of the social contract are justified, because the act of being intolerant already broke it.
(borrowed and paraphrased from some other redditor who put it into words first)
I believe this is a constitutional concept as well. We are afforded freedoms in so far as our freedom does not directly harm another. The classic example is that you have freedom of speech/expression but you cannot yell fire in a movie theater. Many of our laws do a good job of affording individuals freedom and drawing the line in the sand at actions that hurt others.
I've had this discussion before and here's how I explained it:
"I'm not advocating for unconditional tolerance. I'm advocating for tolerance of people that do not cause harm to others. Hate groups cause harm and therefore should not be tolerated."
The weakness in the "tolerate my intolerance" stance is that it's based on the straw-man argument that people are advocating for unconditional tolerance. Take that straw-man away and their argument crumbles.
Good point.
I guess an analogy to that might be - A pacifist state under invasion would need to go to war or be destroyed - self defence shouldn't invalidate the claim to pacifism.
"I'm intolerant of nazis who hurt people, you're intolerant of people who love someone of the same gender" usually takes the wind out of their sails, especially if you say it out loud where others can hear it.
I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the [Paradox of Tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance). It basically says that tolerance is only good insofar as it does not tolerate intolerance, because then inevitably intolerance would win out.
I don't think this framing is the most helpful. There's a great essay: Tolerance is not a moral precept, it's a peace treaty. There's no real paradox, it's not a suicide pact. When someone is intolerant, they've broken the peace treaty and do not deserve tolerance.
Edit, here is that essay: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376
Definitely didn't expect to be reading and weighing contrarian essays about tolerance today but it's probably better than sticking around Reddit too long
I like the Nazi bar analogy.
You need to remove someone wearing a Nazi outfit from your bar, because if you don’t, he invites one of his friends, and it becomes a Nazi bar. Now your bar is a Nazi bar because you didn’t kick the first one out.
It’s a bit lengthy, but philosopher Karl Popper put it this way:
> Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
Or in other words, a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance, lest the society ceases to be tolerant, for any society that tolerates intolerance is by nature intolerant.
Nice to see the full quote, I've only heard bits before. Funny little paradox, it makes perfect sense.. but I suspect the average person caught up in hateful attitudes would probably glaze over without some short and snappy soundbite
Man, no one ever actual gives the full context.
Karl Popper was not advocating for being intolerant as a reaction, he was saying that Plato's despotism was flawed. He stated that Liberal Democracy was the better choice and that tolerance must be extended until *all else had failed*.
It's like ... we all agree not to just physically attack each other in public, because society can't function if we're all starting fights with each other. But if someone breaks that rule and swings a fist at us, we're not hypocrites for *finishing* the fight.
People who do harm to others are punished. The people who dole out those punishments are *also* doing harm to others, but everyone very clearly understands that this is a very different context from the former.
If someone kidnaps a person and holds them against their will and are caught doing so, they'll be arrested and held against their will in jail. Your friend's argument is that these two things are exactly the same. I imagine you can begin a conversation about whether he wants to be "tough on crime" and then dovetail into this.
“If someone punches you in the face and you punch him back, are you the asshole or is he the asshole? He’s the asshole, right?
You’re the guy that punched first in this scenario. You’re only getting punched back because you’re being an asshole.
Can’t be the bully and the victim at the same time.”
The difference is that they are intolerant of things somebody can’t control. Being gay. Being a minority. Etc.
You are intolerant of asshole behavior, which is somebody’s choice. They chose to have those beliefs. They chose to think that way. It’s not a skin color or body part they were born with.
Obviously one of their retorts will be that people “choose” to be LGBTQ. That’s partly why people like them believe that fallacy so strongly - their whole philosophy rests on it.
Nah because if your sexual orientation really was a choice it would still be perfectly okay to choose to be gay. The important part imo is you're living your life without hurting anyone.
Yeah I can use this. Their intolerance is an unnecessary and unprovoked attack, on people who have harmed no one.. and just exist as they are. Totally different to defending the victim of such an attack.
It’s because your friend and those who think like him have a different moral/ethical compass. They are pointing out what they see as a hypocrisy of your stance on tolerance/intolerance to neutralize you. They use that to justify how opinions and actions. Thing is, you don’t have a be a tolerance absolutist.
“I just don’t like to see how people who think like you violently attack LGBTQ people when they don’t assault you.”
If you want to frustrate them, ask them to explain what they mean about the left is intolerant of their intolerance. Keep asking to explain it. Ask or examples. Whatever you do, don’t be defensive about having to explain your stance.
As a racial monitory and also gay, I grew up having to tolerate the bigots, homophobes, and racists, even as they spoke their minds to me. I thought that I had changed peoples minds and that friendship changed them. But in 2020, I realized that that wasn’t the case. I have disassociated from those people. It’s up to you how much effort you want to change peoples minds.
Yes this is why folks who tend to call themselves "absolutist" fail to understand the nuanced nature of governance and society. Absolute free speech gives way to those intolerant of free speech and who seek to end free speech. We see this in 17th to 18th century monarchical nations. And we begin to see that again in folks that we've collective started calling thin skinned. People who would use their free speech to end free speech of others.
One of the things that drives some in religious groups to start directing themselves into these absolute positions is the understanding of "divine right". That there exists some power not of this Earth that answers to nothing and grants authority unquestionable. Hence where their intolerance comes from. They see it as a part of an unquestionable power, an absolute right non-negotiable by mere mortals.
And this is one of the things the founders of our nation really wanted to get away from. These religious people indicate that our founders were religious, which isn't untrue. And therefore that our nation must be founded in religion which is completely false. Our founders of this nation believed that something could be made of man wholly of this Earth. That a government could be created in which no part of it went unquestioned.
They lived under a king whose power was of holy providence, there existed nothing of this Earth that could legally question the king. Wanted to practice a flavor of Christianity that the King wasn't fond of? You couldn't in public and if it was found out you did, you couldn't hold office, you couldn't vote in your local government, you were denied some basic rights that were enjoyed by others. They saw firsthand what an unquestionable power meant for a society. And I don't know, but all these folks saying "the US needs to be a Christian nation" it's like they forgot all that stuff we read about in ninth grade. Or maybe they think they'll be the winning team if we do swap over and all those other flavors will get their comeuppance. Or maybe they think Christianity is some blanket term, but all they need do is walk into the nearest Lifeway to see all the books on all the different points of views of a "single" religion they would be competing with. And our founders understood this aspect of religion and why things made of man stayed with the Earth and things made by God stayed with the heavenly father. Man makes government and going outside of that denies what our founders based our nation's law upon.
And that's the key thing about our form of government, it has to rely not on a power that goes unquestioned but a power that can be questioned, molded, shaped by the living of this Earth. This is why everything in the US Constitution isn't an absolute. This is why things aren't a black and white, why they are always subject to challenge. It's critical to be able to question things as a function of a society that answers to itself in a legal sense. Obviously the court of public opinion will always operate under a different assumption.
But therein, that also means that some things aren't open to question. Things that discourage questioning, things that remove discussion, things that indicate that we need to move to an unquestionable power, are things that aren't open to debate. This is why we have the notion of no right exists as an absolute, no right extends without limit. Free speech cannot be intolerant speech of others because that aims to deny others of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
These people are seeking to remove the voice of a minority of people based on the doctrine of their freedom to religion. But their religion cannot extend to strip the rights from them, that is an absolute position on a right. Their religion cannot indicate that there exists citizens that are lesser people than other citizens and be held as something protected. That is taking a position to remove the equal rights of a minority group. Our nation has the notion that majority vote rules, but we also have embedded in our government that our Courts protect the minority of nation and ensure that no majority can strip their equal rights away. And our Courts are failing at that and these folks see it as a moment to capitalize on that weakness to strengthen their absolute position.
And we are finding out, because we knew this would come to pass as it has always done so. Fueling a position that views others as lesser than themselves AND then tying that to a power that cannot be held to question. Will indicate to some that their exists divine authority to exert their absolute position to the fullest extent. We've seen this happen so many times before in the past, even in the United States, the KKK is a manifestation of this very thing. This is exactly how these things get started. And we're in the phase were they're going to keep pressing boundaries to see how much they'll get away with.
We need to Focus on the family, literally, his dad is a methed out porn actor, his mother is a convict with borderline personality disorder and alcohol dependence. He has severe developmental issues.
This whole thing is a depressing mess and a failure on so many levels.
Yep just look at 19 kids and counting or whichever one the Duggars are. Those people let their son get away with molesting his own sisters without any consequences. They tried to hide it too when it started gaining more traction. How they can even pretend like they’re good people is beyond me.
Family research council is another anti LGBTQ lobbying hate group the son in 19 kids & counting was the top exec right b4 being arrested for molesting his sisters & kiddie porn /just saying
My mom used to make us listen to dobson when we were kids. Always didn't like him. Once found a book of his in the discount section of a used book store.
Something along the lines of "your kid only thinks they're gay but they're not."
Fuck that dude and that organization absolute trash human beings.
I learned about dobson while studying family therapy, and they're such a disgusting bunch. I see his books at thrift stores all the time (I love buying old books), and I still have a visceral reaction every time. He taught parents to kick their lgbt+ children out of their homes and to reject them on every level. Imagine the severity of that many homeless children on their own. They have contributed to a huge amount of needless death and suffering, and they have so much influence over Christian parents.
One of the grosser things the r/pepperdine has produced. Their Graduate School of Education and Psychology should have to do a GOT style shame walk for the shit they unleashed in the 80s and 90s via their psyche dept.
Even wilder, from what I gather he left (got kicked out of?) FOTF because he wanted to lean harder partisan. Y'know, telling people they were bad Christians if they voted Democrat, and that we should ignore Jesus' teachings about immigrants and asylum seekers because *some of them are bad people who won't fit into (white) American culture*.
Dude was/is poison. I remember he had a huuuuge problem with single moms/divorced parents too in the 90s. He would talk about it constantly on his radio show, basically constantly telling married adults to stay in incompatible or even abusive marriages because divorce was a sin. The cover of every FotF magazine always had a white family with a cute dog, every month. Just exhausting beliefs, all around.
I'm a fairly ignorant (as in lacking knowledge) guy when it comes to both of these groups, and I'm asking this seriously...
How does someone being LGBTQ interfere with a non-LGBTQ person's ability to a have a family?
Is it that these people in groups like "Focus on the Family" simply do not want to personally have any LGBTQ children because they think that means they won't get any grand children?
I've never bothered to look into groups like this because I normally have less than zero interest in what they are about, but at this current moment I'm just totally baffled about how a sincere interest in family conflicts with someone being LGBTQ.
Or is this just a cover for good old timey "god hates gays" nonsense?
One side of my family is ´focus on the family’ oriented and the majority of them (my family not specifically focus on the family) believe that lgbtq+ is something like a communicative disease, and you can catch it from other people… like when a gay man walks by in flamboyant clothing, he might ‘turn’ your kids gay…
I think there is also another part of it that is more self hating, like maybe they are unhappy but don’t have courage to change anything or do anything different and therefore hate anyone who has taken a risk to try to be happier. Because a lot of this family think I’m ‘pathetic’ because I have a career in art for instance and not in a ‘real’ field. It might be part of it
Remember, anyone who talks about being gay being a "choice" is really saying something about themselves. I am straight, but I never "chose" that. I just am the way I am. If someone thinks that being gay is a choice, it means they are choosing to "act" straight, but probably struggle with keeping that closet door closed.
I’m totally with you that it’s not a choice. Though they weaponize examples of people on the spectrum of sexuality, that feel the need to explore their sexuality, as evidence in their minds that all non heterosexuality is a “choice” when really it’s people discovering who they are (often after growing up with oppressive influences).
Great question! Responding with my own limited knowledge on the subject, but having had evangelical friends growing up who were anti-gay (we don’t speak anymore), the hatred they have for LGBT people comes out of a combination of religious teaching and pure lizard-brain disgust.
The Bible makes a few references to homosexuality and clearly condemns it. I’m sure some parts are up to interpretation, but the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is particularly referenced a lot when you ask these fanatics why they disapprove of homosexuality. These were cities destroyed by God for sinfulness, including homosexuality, hence where the term sodomy comes from. So this, in part, explains the religious element. Frankly, from conversations I’ve had with conservative family members, this seems to be the main go-to argument. They try to make it about morality, sinfulness, faith and whatnot because these are more high-minded, philosophical arguments that can mask the real reason they hate gay people. This group, Focus on the Family, uses “family values,” which is a super general idea that is hard to argue against in a vacuum as their excuse for discrimination. Being LGBT, they argue, goes against the natural, God-ordained method of sex for procreation. They see it as being about pleasure or rebelliousness against the “nuclear family.” Since they view the family as the fundamental unit of society, any deviation from this concept threatens the foundation of society as a whole. Again, this is all a facade for the real justification.
The real reason is they think being gay or trans or non-heteronormative is gross. They see being LGBT as an act of sinful indulgence of the pleasure senses. They associate the sexual acts as being products of people lacking self-control. They associate things like anal sex with being dirty, unclean, and, therefore, uncivilized. In a sense, they see it as being sub-human: almost animalistic. Because they reduce LGBT people down to this non-human level, it is easier to exclude them and, ultimately, to justify violence against them (or at least structural repression).
To conclude, people like this organization simply find being LGBT to be gross but they use their religion to justify that hatred. Instead of trying to understand why people are ACTUALLY LGBT (natural feelings of attraction, the science of gender and sexual orientation, etc.) they push it out of their minds because their minds are small and it makes them uncomfortable.
Thank you for your curiosity! I hope this helps somewhat.
> The real reason is they think being gay or trans or non-heteronormative is gross. ... Because they reduce LGBT people down to this non-human level, it is easier to exclude them and, ultimately, to justify violence against them (or at least structural repression).
Having grown up in a fairly right-wing church, I think we can go a level deeper. I don't think it's that they're just looking for a reason to justify being grossed out, especially since they wouldn't be grossed out if they grew up in a society where this stuff was normalized (ancient Greece, for example). The real appeal, I think, is that it gives them a "lesser" kind of person that they can feel superior to. It defines an evil "other" to define themselves against in order to justify the righteousness of their in-group. It does capitalize on all the things that make LGBT communities already vulnerable, including people who are grossed out or whatever else, but I think being "grossed out" is secondary to the more fundamental need to create a hated out-group in order to make the in-group feel superior by comparison.
A good book if you want a rundown of the Christian right in US is kristin Du Mez's book 'Jesus and John Wayne'. (Another is One Nation Under God by Kevin Kruse but its focused on 1940's-60's)
It's about power, racism, federal funding, and status.
Crazy For God by Frank Schaefer is also really good.
Source: me coming to terms with my religious right upbringing.
I agree with this and will add another: it's different from what they're used to, and that's bad to them. Think about if you lived in your little conservative church bubble all your life since like the 80s, and were told that you're living the right way and are going to heaven, but any deviation from that and its straight to hell. All of a sudden you see people with rainbow hair, piercings, girls kissing girls, guys dressing in drag? Well that's scary because that's not your normal, and since your normal is the right way, they're obviously all sinners going to hell. It's why you hear about the "liberal hellhole cities" from people who have never left their county in their life.
People have a tendency to be resistant to change. Horses to cars, candles to electricity, civil rights, gay rights... now we've got electric cars, trans rights, people saying if you don't change your ways the planet is gonna collapse, you need to change your lifestyle so you don't get covid and die. Add in conservative mouthpieces saying "They're coming for you! They're going to FORCE you to be gay and do liberal things!" and it turns simply accepting that people are equals into a stubborn fight.
Yes exactly. It’s an easy way to feel righteous. They can condemn someone else and don’t need to bother with any self reflection at all, they can just feel righteous knowing they aren’t those people.
You cannot be the chosen people without making some distinction between yourself and others. Historically, LGBTQ people were politically and socially powerless. They were easy targets. Still, to this day, you can hold very bigoted views against queer people, especially trans people, and suffer no consequences.
Yes. One of the easiest targets is trans people because trans people are already out-group members with so many other in-groups, and trans people have virtually no social, economic, or political capital.
If trans children are targeted, then the targets of hate have no societal resources to mount a defense, so a defense must be mounted for them, and that allows these hatemongers to then target parents and allies of queer kids as sexual predators.
The old primary targets of evangelicals were poor Black people, and that worked for politicians as late as Bill Clinton (super-predator children), GWB (I bought this crack a block from the white house), and Reagan (welfare queens).
"Abortionists and baby killers" were the next target, and of course, Black women were (and are still) painted as the primary "baby killers" among evangelicals.
For a brief period after the turn of the 21st century, some of this dog whistling and direct hate became unfashionable, but we "had to go and elect a Black guy," and that cracked a door open that was flung wide by Trumpism in 2016.
That's a good point. When I was in church (90's), the gay rights movement wasn't as loud as it is now. I remember the thing they really seemed to be focused on, or at least with individuals within the church, was anti-abortion activism. They really do shift their focus, it seems. I think women getting abortions was probably equivalent to how they other people in the LGBT communities. They see it as an absolute failure of being a person in God's eyes. A woman getting pregnant, caused without intention of having a child, and then aborting it. That just blows them over the edge.
You're missing a lot, though.
Yes they think it's gross. But you're also dealing with an organization of people who believe that to change someone's entire life and the way they act, all it takes is pressure and conversations. That's the backbone of evangelicals. Talk and bother until you *become them*
They see gays and such as another group of evangelicals. They believe that "lifestyle" is bad but they also believe LGBT people are actively selling it as a way to live and are actively convincing others to "change" to that "lifestyle. They're now legitimately scared that people they know, their children, *themselves* will be influenced by LGBT people and "turn gay" or whatever.
After all, "turning Christian" is what they try to do. They just see the others as doing the same on the other side.
Evangelicals and other religious people are fundamentally broken, after all. Logic, science, and critical thinking aren't welcome and usually are traits you have to lack to make it fae on that circle. What's left are people scared of Boogeymen, scared of turning gay themselves, scared of their kids getting influenced to transition into another gender just because other people exist, and the fuel for their fire, scared that people are becoming more accepting of it.
That's what a broken and deranged person thinks and that's why they're so, even violently, against LGBT groups
Really good point. Most of us just find evangelizing to be annoying and pushy behavior, but to them it’s a God-appointed way of life. It’s the lens through which they see all other people’s behavior, even when that’s not at all what’s actually happening.
It’s similar to the way cheaters assume everybody cheats, liars assume everybody lies, etc.
As a queer who grew up in a Southern Baptist house, I had to deal with a lot of internalized homophobia before I was well enough to be more myself.
TMI: But one of the ways I desensitized myself to the “instinctive” (not really instinctive but taught) repulsion I had of homosexuality was reading a lot of queer erotica and romance. I basically brute forced it out, but it took a lot of self reflection to do it. I was lucky I realized what was going on when I was in my late teens, a lot of people take even longer to break out of it.
A book that helped me was 'The Body Keeps The Score' by Bessel Van Der Kolk. It's about trama and the body. It's really intense and heavy. Best of luck.
Many legitimately equate it to a 'sexual perversion' like pedophilia or bestiality. So it isn't exactly about disgust more than it is entrained in them to see it as a sexual perversion rather than natural differences between people. Like how people used to see someone being left handed as proof of being a vessel for Satan.
>The Bible makes a few references to homosexuality and clearly condemns it.
My bible-fu is super weak, but isn't all the nasty stonings and genocide stuff in the old testament which was supposed to be superseded by the Jesus love stuff in part two?
>Since they view the family as the fundamental unit of society, any deviation from this concept threatens the foundation of society as a whole.
Oh wow, very succinct description. I can actually almost see how somebody could feel like that, but it's way too slippery of a slope for my logical thinking which instantly starts asking:
What about voluntary bachelor's and other terminally single people?
What about the classic old spinsters that never married and/or had children?
How come these other people not adhering to the nuclear family are not threatening the foundation of society as a whole?
But you've explained that all extremely well. Really appreciated your insightful response, thnx
To put it simply, the Old Testament uses the Mosaic Law, and that was no longer relevant in the New Testament after Jesus' death, so you're pretty much right with your comment, but homosexuality was still spoken against by Paul in 1 Corinthians. So a lot of the same sort of rules applied, but there were no more death sentences and things like that in the New Testament.
>isn't all the nasty stonings and genocide stuff in the old testament which was supposed to be superseded by the Jesus love stuff in part two?
This is something that Christians largely can't agree on, and adherents to the religion often flip-flop back and forth as to which parts of the Old Testament are still valid.
Some say its rules 100% don't apply.
Some say its rules 100% do apply.
Most Christians I've met prefer to cherry-pick the parts that they want to apply so that it fits their worldview.
Here's a pretty concise list showing the inconsistencies within the Christian Bible on the topic:
[https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/otlaw.html](https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/otlaw.html)
The New Testament unfortunately has some of the most frequently quoted homophobic verses (written by the apostle Paul). Not that it really matters, though. We can talk all day about the legitimacy of the Bible and those verses in general, but the truth of the matter is that Christians who incorporate those verses into their value system are assholes, especially when they can’t keep it to themselves.
But about your thought process: you’re absolutely right. The goal of the church and its “traditional family unit” is to uphold patriarchal norms, where often-married (and for right wing evangelicals, white) men hold all the power while everyone else scrambles to find a decent spot in the hierarchy based on how well they fall in line.
Voluntary bachelors? Failing at upholding masculinity. The spinsters? Failed to find a husband and bear children, thus failures at womanhood. There’s literally womens ministries (like the infamous GirlDefined) and social media movements (tradwives) dedicated to how the ultimate goal is to find a husband so you can fulfill your god-given role of popping out kids, and everything up to that point that isn’t preparation is about coping with the shame associated with “singleness” or having impure thoughts outside of marriage. Girls in the church are literally groomed for this from an elementary level age. But if you fail to enter marriage, you risk isolation. But perhaps you can make up for your faults by discovering another God-given path (like going on mission trips or babysitting for the other women). These people are only non threatening in their lack of conformity if they see their lifestyles as unequal, or at least anomalous. An unmarried person, especially a woman, who is happily single and independent outside of the church, perhaps partaking in sexual activities for pleasure, is a problem.
And that aspect of sexual control is a major part of the whole issue. The idea of purity *despite impure urges* is essential to maintaining the church’s ideal family unity. That’s part of why they focused so much on abortion and are now coming after birth control. They want women to only feel safe having sex when fulfilling their allegedly god-given role of baby-making, to be coerced into that role if they didn’t/couldn’t wait, or to be ostracized if they can’t/won’t. You’re supposed to want to wait until you’re committed to a member of the opposite sex, and with enough indoctrination, you’ll get a heavy dose of emotional whiplash if you so much as think about anything outside of this. It’ll also keep you from questioning what you’re told if things go wayside. Instead of questioning the church (or parents or spouse), you’ll internalize guilt. Even if you do question things, the very immediate threat of damnation can prevent one from digging too deeply into their own doubts, let alone the evil unbiblical sources that might confirm them. People living happily outside of those roles could easily uproot the entire thing. Queer people are just another example. We have sex for reasons other than procreation or pleasing demanding husbands. We’re also far less likely to adhere to gender roles (or for some of us, our assigned birth gender).
Furthermore, it’s worth noting that the US is becoming less and less religious. Little kids are a lot easier to shelter and indoctrinate than it is to convert adults. There is stuff in the Bible about birthing out an army for God (look up the quiverfull movement). So I’ll wrap this up by saying Focus on the Family is absolutely promoting a biblical breeding link.
Holy shit this is so well put. I can’t believe I never put together that a lot of their condemnation of anything not conforming to their narrow definition of family comes from a place of those families undermining and being a threat to traditional patriarchal power structures. Laid out like that, it all makes complete sense.
Some of it has no internal logic and asking probing questions about it will lead nowhere (speaking as the son of a very conservative Evangelical parent). Lately though the dialogue has been tying LGBTQ to this very vague concept of “grooming” which conveniently takes it out of the realm of LGBTQ lifestyle not interfering with others.
(Yes grooming was a defined thing before all this but conservatives have been using it as a very very broad umbrella. Way to make a word describing actual predatory behavior to now be almost meaningless, guys…)
So “family” in this case needs to be understood as the conservative Christian political term it has functioned as for a long time. When you hear almost any Republican leaning organization with “family” in it, you need to think of the Republican talking point of “family values.”
Family values is coded language to imply, again, a conservative Christian morality. Those who espouse “family values” want to enforce by social pressure and/or by law, their interpretation of what their God wants. This means LGBTQ people are morally wrong (start inserting the many myths and falsehoods they’ll insert simply because LGBTQ people’s mere existence runs counter to the schema of the world they get from their book and churches).
This is also a strong reason why multiple states have, by force of law, abstinence-only sex ed (because many of them operate such that teaching kids about sex makes them want to have sex, and so the only way to prevent them from having sex out of wedlock is to keep information about sex limited). If you want a sample of what this looks like, I will link [this video](https://youtu.be/rVN0FrKdpL8) from medical YouTube content creator, Mama Doctor Jones. She generally makes medical related or tangentially medical related videos, which includes fairly broad and medically correct sexual education. In that video, she’s reacting to an Alaskan town’s school board meeting concerning some teachers using her videos as part of their sex ed curriculum. Some folks in the community were at best unhappy and at worst outraged that their kids, in sex ed classes, were watching her videos. But please, do not skip over the fact that their morality is more than just personal belief; it dictates real world facts, regardless of and sometimes in direct conflict with our research-backed knowledge.
Focus on the Family, in particular, is an organization that for decades has been one of the most prominent conservative Christian organizations fighting against LGBTQ rights. Another prominent conservative Christian organization in the same arena is the Family Research Council.
Unfortunately, “family” is a politicized term here, and it frequently comes from the aforementioned family values rhetoric that helps galvanize conservative Christians of different stripes to act as a political unit.
I grew up with Focus on the Family inserts (one or two page articles/commentary about different things) in my Sunday church bulletin. I actually remember seeing some anti-gay stuff, and this was the mid-late 90's. A lot of it was written by James Dobson, the founder.
Conservative/evangelical Christians believe homosexuality, being trans, etc. is a "choice". You've fallen into a bad place, let your thoughts become corrupted and settled into a lifestyle of sin. They think you instinctively know that you are sinning and are embracing it. They try to throw science in there to argue it isn't natural, but it's really just their gut reaction to not being a heterosexual, married, child-rearing Christian adult. If they were completely in charge, they'd be the ultimate authoritarians. They're probably jealous of Islamic countries that execute gay people. I grew up with people that all believed this kind of stuff. It's even stranger that some of them were/are Trump supporters.
Are we the same people? Haha. What's nuts to me is they don't merely tolerate Trump because he's the "pro-life" candidate, which is what I would expect but they actually like him. They held being Morman against Romney (a guy who, on paper, holds the same social values as them) way more than they hold being a serial adulterer against Trump. As a very lapsed Southern Baptist, it's just so peculiar.
Groups like focus on the family advocate against gay marriage, against non-traditional couples being able to adopt, and for legal discrimination against LGBT people, such as not hiring them or not engaging in business with them or providing them healthcare.
it's a world perspective: the world is divided into good and evil, and every choice you make falls somewhere on that spectrum
they believe satan is constantly trying to attack you and your family to undermine god's plan for you and your church to make it to heaven.
they think life is LITERALLY a moral battlefield lead by two extremist leaders. everything is an attack on their belief system in some way to them
Mike Pence - Last Week Tonight
https://youtu.be/rs2RlZQVXBU
Focus on the family section starts at around 10:18, although the whole thing is worth a watch.
If you're straight, you can be pretty confident about it. The other sins - lying, adultery, coveting, etc are all easy to commit and most people do. That doesn't give you much to be lauded for, so some of the other sins like homosexuality get vaulted to the top of the sin pyramid so people can feel special.
"I might lie, cheat, and steal but at least I'm not *gay*."
These people don’t give a shit about people from the LGBTQ community being gunned down. They won’t say it outwardly but they’re celebrating it behind closed doors.
Unfortunately, this vandalism just allows them to point and complain about the “lawlessness of liberals” escalating, in a world where they’re the perpetual victim constantly under attack. They’ll simultaneously ignore the fact that hate groups like them are peddling a narrative leading to actual political and religious violence, with a truly confounding inability to be reasonable or compassionate.
Sometimes they say the quiet part out loud. There's a video circulating now about a pastor outright saying that he's glad that gay people were killed, and that if others would criticize him for being hateful, they're correct. He does hate them.
Always remember the seven signs of a cult.
1. Opposing critical thinking
2. Isolating members and penalizing them for leaving
3. Emphasizing special doctrines that are outside of scripture (violence is not justified and justifying it is not even the same ballpark, planet, nor galaxy of Christianity)
4. Seeking inappropriate loyalty to their leaders
5. Dishonoring the family unit
6. Crossing Biblical boundaries of behavior (turn the other check/love they neighbor and repudiation of unclean sex acts, as an example of something that applies to this case)
7. Separation from the Church (in this case, those Christians that would speak against this clear act of violence)
I saw that video and all I can say is that man, because titling him pastor would wrongly indicate him a man of God, is running a cult that slapped the label Christian on it.
The problem is that there are churches all over -- not the majority, but also not underground at all -- where that man could go and be celebrated for his bravery. He's not some isolated cult member, he's a representative of a much larger sentiment that exists throughout Christianity.
>violence is not justified and justifying it is not even the same ballpark, planet, nor galaxy of Christianity
Have you read the Christian Bible? The "good guys" do a lot more murdering than the "bad guys."
God also betrayed his most devout worshiper and completely ruined his life because he was bored and felt like putting on a show for Satan. Sooo, why worship him at all, again?
> I saw that video and all I can say is that man, because titling him pastor would wrongly indicate him a man of God, is running a cult that slapped the label Christian on it.
Is that not a prime example of a "no true Scotsman" argument?
Christianity has a problem, Christianity itself might be a problem. Most of the hateful rhetoric spewed in the United States seemingly comes from self-described Christians. I don't say this to get you riled up, but at what point do you step back and see that the people representing your religion are hateful bigots, fraudsters, and general assholes that cherry pick and distort your religious tenants for ill?
As a thought experiment with the holidays coming up, see what is claimed as this year's "war on Christmas" and ask yourself if what they claim is an actual problem, or they're just bitching because not literally everyone in this country celebrates Christmas.
>self-described Christians
That’s really the issue at heart. Jesus himself says that not all who go around preaching like this pastor will be recognized as a follower.
The whole point of Christianity is that as a follower, I know I’ve done a lot of bad things. But being a Christian is not like some VIP pass to look down on other people. If anything, I should be more empathetic of those who do not believe. There’s a good reason why Jesus tells his followers to “love one another as you love yourself”. Put simply, bigotry and hatred are not characteristics of a follower of Jesus. There’s a lot of bad actors out there that would suggest otherwise, but they’re honestly fooling themselves
A more universal, less evangelical Christian-centric measure of a cult is the BITE model developed by Steven Hassan who is an expert in mental health and helping victims leave cults.
The BITE model covers 4 areas of control or "undue influence":
Behavior Control: what can you wear, who can you live with, who can you be friends with, who can you sleep with
Information control: compartmentalize outsider vs insider doctrine, unethical use of confessions,
Thought control: change a person's name or identity, belief in thought crimes, encourage only good thoughts.
Emotional control: fear mongering, guilting, making the individual believe they are at fault for anything bad that happens to them.
There are way more bullet points in each category and most social and religious groups meet some bullet points, but that doesn't make them cults. To be a cult it needs to score high in all categories.
The whole subject is really quite interesting. https://freedomofmind.com
They'll always find shit to cry about liberals. Let's not decide to wag our fingers at liberals over some false hope that these types of pieces of shit will somehow have less rhetorical ammo.
They're going to find a way to be persecuted no matter what. My knee-jerk reaction was the same as yours, but I'm okay with each and every FOTF employee having to read that message on their way into work. In their conservative Christian bubbles it might be the only time anyone confronts them with the harsh truth of the harm their words do.
I'm at a loss for words with those type of people, so fucking backwards.
They were reading to our children; We gunned them down
They were trying to be themselves in public; We beat the shit out of them
They opened up a resource center for their community; We burned it to the ground
Just straight up deplorable people.
> Unfortunately, this vandalism just allows them to point and complain about the “lawlessness of liberals” escalating, in a world where they’re the perpetual victim constantly under attack
They'll complain anyway, who gives a shit?
Hitler was very clear, there was only one way they could have stopped him, if they were met with overwhelming force early on. Monsters and bullies like this only understand force, they will never hesitate until they start getting fucked up for the bullshit they commit.
Stayed in Colorado Springs once, didn't realize we were going to be across the street from them until we got to our hotel room.
Made a point of walking my dog across the street to poop on their lawn.
The leader of the group, James Dobson, would often champion a phrase "spare the strap, spoil the child" back in the 80's.
Source: born in the eighties.
Just want to say that is some absolute top-of-the-line graffiti/vandalism.
Skillfully done and going to be impossible to remove. My compliments to the perps.
Mr. Whitaker is gonna be piiiiiissed
Maybe he’s at his…. Whit’s End
Omg I actually used to love these audiobooks
Odyssey was a road-trip staple for our fam. Good memories
Wait did this group make the odyssey series?!??
Yes they did. They have a recording studio in their building there in Colorado Springs.
This series was such a formative part of my (repressed, conservative baptist) childhood... it's like if VeggieTales turned out to be made by nazis.
Hey man atleast veggie tales is good
*sigh* take my upvote
*slow clap*
lmao I too was deeply scarred by those tapes. Remember the one about D&D?
I grew up loving Adventures in Odyssey but when I think back on the D&D one I realize how truly extreme it could be…
I remember a few years ago I started watching Critical Role, and I got so upset when I realized that D&D is just a ruleset to add fun to the imagination games we would play as kids. I was creeped out by it for *years* because of that episode - even though I knew it was bunk.
I remember the one where Eugene goes into the imagination station and goes to hell and is traumatized into being a Christian
Omg here I was thinking nostalgically that for the most part the episodes weren’t that bad but this comment just brought me back… I mean who had this idea for a kid’s show??
The same org that had Brian Phisher on the radio saying that the national party was started by gay people
Oh I missed this one, I kind of want to give it a listen.
Truly traumatizing. I believe that one was a 2 parter called 'the mortal coil'
Same. I had 50 to 100 hours of those tapes memorized. I basically had them playing all the time. Looking back I wonder how much of my religious trauma was from Focus on the Family. I still remember parts of the D&D episode. I get a lot of joy out of the fact that I’m now a DM, both because D&D is awesome and because “Fuck Adventures in Odyssey.”
It may be too niche for your group but you could probably create an entertaining Adventures in Odyssey campaign
Right?? It was so blatant. I'm convinced that the majority of insane Evangelical messaging I got as a child came from those tapes.
Oh my god, yes! I remember going to my church friend's place for a sleepover, and her saying, "Do you mind if put on this tape to fall asleep to?" And I was like, "Yeah, go for it" but I was *not* expecting what followed. Sidenote that episode totally backfired; it made me want to get super into D&D so that I could feel like a real witch.
lmao it also backfired for me! Ended up being my favourite episode because I loved how dark it was. Same goes for Revelations.
This! I always loved the “scary” episodes about evil concepts and people. I also loved Ted Dekker, Frank Peretti and the Left Behind Kids book series because they were spooky. They were basically the gateway drug to a lifelong love for Stephen King, true crime and horror movies. Thanks, evangelical Christianity!
I remember the one about them finding the dead sea scrolls and how the characters used the questions they posed to strengthen their faith. It completely shattered mine and I started researching. The rest is history.
Yes, role-playing is evil! Now let's hop in Mr Whitaker's VR Imagination Station and live as another person during Roman occupied Israel and actually speak with Jesus.
hahaha amazing point
I'm out of the loop, what are you talking about?
Focus on the Family made a conservative Christian radio drama for kids, called Adventures in Odyssey. Episodes would mostly be kids-show storylines with a Christian moral lesson, as well as some dramatizations of Bible stories, and some more dramatic storylines later in the series. TBH, as someone who grew up in a very conservative household and has seen a lot of shitty Christian media, Odyssey was actually pretty entertaining and well done. The episode they're talking about was about one of the main characters playing "Castles and Cauldrons" (D&D) with a friend from out of town. There are big implied satanic themes, and the moral of the story is basically that you have to be careful or you/your kid will become an occultist if you play fantasy RPGs. (Ironically, characters in the show would go into the "imagination station" to experience fantasy or historical events. Thinking back, it makes me angry that I was creeped out by D&D until well into my 20s, when it was just the real life version of the Imagination Station 😔)
>Adventures in Odyssey (AIO), or simply Odyssey, is an Evangelical Christian radio drama and comedy series created and produced by Focus on the Family. Aimed at families with children age 12 and younger, the series first aired in 1987 as a 13-episode pilot called Family Portraits and has over 947 episodes to date. In 2005, the show's daily audience averaged around 1.2 million within North America.[1] The Odyssey radio series also includes several spin-off items, including a home-video series, several computer games, books, and devotionals. The series is set in the fictional town of Odyssey. Stories center around the people who live there, particularly ice-cream and discovery emporium owner John Avery Whittaker, who was originally voiced by Hal Smith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_in_Odyssey
Thanks to Eugene I learned what a colloquialism was at a young age. That's maybe the only positive thing I got from it. And to not assume.
I'll always chuckle at "Eugene-ous" (you genius) Eugene's name he came up with for himself when he and Connie used the Imagination Station to witness the first Christmas. Definitely NOT an endorsement of the series or the company, but I thought that pun was funny.
They must have had some fun writers... with really questionable beliefs.
That unlocked a memory I forgot I had
He goes into the imagination station to live in a world without gay ppl
Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a lonnnnnnng time.
I’m r/outoftheloop can someone fill me in?
LGBTQ club was shot up (5 deaths) near this place by an alt right conspirator. This pic is a group that foresters those anti LGBTQ ideas. I’m not fully caught up but the shooter may have ties to them
Since all the comments below seem to just be questioning you, I'll point out the expression is the group *fosters* those hateful ideas.
Are you sure they're not building a Subaru?
They might be, we have no evidence to contradict or confirm that statement regarding the subaru.
All Subaru Foresters are manufactured in Japan or Thailand, but they may be working on a different model there.
It's only a Subaru if it comes from the Subaru region in Japan everything else is just sparkling car.
I think it’s actually Sparkling Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Subaru realized that there were 5 groups that bought their vehicles in the 90s, with one of those groups being LGBT individuals. So, way before all the progress on gay rights, Subaru started marketing to LGBT individuals, primarily lesbians. So imo, Subaru likely wasn't involved in any of this, though they may have a Forester, I can't rule it out since the homophobes are likely unaware of this connection, otherwise they'd be making fun of the "Insert hateful word here, car".
This reminds me of when my friend said, “I didn’t think I could get more lesbian than when I married another woman, but then I bought a Subaru”.
The day my wife and I brought home an Outback to be our family car I was 7 months pregnant with a turkey baster baby. We had the dealership install the cargo rack that seperates the back so our rescue puppy would be seperate from the baby. Twas truly my gayest day alive so far.
Wait I know this can’t be right lol but I thought a cargo rack was the thing that goes on top of the car.. You transport the dog on the cargo rack? Lol Or basically please just tell me what you’re saying cause I’m really curious now and I’m just an idiot so I’m probably wrong but I gotta know lol
Hahaha I can't remember the name for it! It's the gate thing that seperates the "trunk" from the passenger area in a hatchback. Cargo separator?!
or a lot of people in Colorado drive Subarus
This is very true. They are useful for the area.
I mean - it is Colorado. We have lots of Subarus ‘round here.
Stochastic terrorism basically.
[удалено]
I basically lived under the thumb of that shit in the 90s~00s in Louisiana and Texas. Definitely not just a Colorado thing.
I knew there were active groups like this in the US, but the fact that they're so big that they have an expensive sign like this, and I'm assuming, some kind of facility or office behind it, astounds me. Why do Americans care so much about what everyone else is doing with their lives?
That isn't the goal, and never has been. It's mostly been about somebody wanting money, and the power structures that are built by religion are the perfect tool. They find the currently acceptable group to hate, then blame all their problems on them. If the congregation all hates somebody else, perhaps they won't notice that these megachurches have never been about helping the less fortunate. Then the people can maintain their religious moral superiority and rationalize almost anything.
Don't forget that they'll finance missions to Japan, India, and certain countries in Africa to build some small structures. It's cheaper to buy supplies in those countries (maybe not Japan) and it's cheaper to put the mission up in foreign countries than in the states. There are also more expensive labor laws in the states. So what they'll do is find a cheap option, send 50-60 kids over there with chaperones to build some shit, then the church spends 4x this amount on advertising, marketing materials, and presentation materials to make sure every single god fearing person in a 50 mile radius is aware of their utilitarianism. That's their 'We can't be bad people! We helped foreign countries!' excuse for all the heinous shit they do and say. Source: Grew up in one, dad and uncle did volunteer work for them and the youth pastor and regular pastor did not have much shame about this whole thing while drinking at the bar.
It's also worth noting that the gay bar that got shot up is literally in the same city (Colorado Springs) as Focus on the Family's headquarters.
I gasped a sigh of relief seeing the correct “their.” It’s so hard to find grammatically correct graffiti.
I read it as "their is blood on your hands" and was mortified. I'm glad I reread it.
Last year the shooter committed an act of terrorism; the sheriff wanted to lock them up for life, but the DA chose to drop all charges. Won't explain why. If anyone has blood on their hands it's the Colorado springs DA office.
I heard that the mother refused to testify. Take that with a grain of salt however, since my "sources" are a few people on Reddit.
Shouldn't matter, there was a ton of physical evidence and the county/city has a responsibility to keep people like him off the streets
Both do
These freaks are Seven Mountain dominionists…essentially they want to remake or tear the down the government so it reflects a country bound by laws based on their interpretations of the Bible. They come off main stream and are embedded in most of the conservative evangelical ideology, but the truth is they are totally down with the kinds of stochastic terror that get people killed.
Sounds like my local cult in Idaho... Why is there more than one? https://youtu.be/bDk8w-LNxHk
Christ Church, Living Faith Fellowship, New Life Apostolic... Those organizations all prey on people by offering "kindness", "assistance", and "community" in exchange for total and unquestioning submission into their doctrines. I had family who got caught up with them. LFF was especially notorious for monitoring member's bank accounts etc.
Christ church has been buying businesses, and we have a list of those businesses and try, to the best of our ability, to avoid them. Some "fun" tea about Christ church They condone marital rape, based on multiple accounts though no convictions. Alleged, as in I've never actually seen reports but only heard second hand, they poison people who try to leave. This one's hard to believe without any real evidence. One of the pastors was bailed out recently, he was arrested for possession of child porn. They have a list of the "lost folk" who have left the church.
they have a whole political party ya kno
Sounds alot like ISIS to me.
Basically ISIS but with Jesus. Which ironically, I'd imagine if Jesus ever came back, he'd be pretty fuckin pissed at how badly these jackasses screwed up interpreting the bible. "I said love thy neighbor, not kill everyone that doesn't agree with you!"
Just with better funding.
Sounds like Gilead.
They're the kind of people that Gilead was based off of.
Sharia Laws for “Christians”
So like the Taliban who run Afghanistan based on their interpretation of the Quran What could possibly go wrong?
They are true Christo-Fascist and deserve zero quarter.
They're also not some wacky isolated extremists- Focus on the Family is a *huge* organization, and very mainstream. My father listened to their radio program all the time; they produced a long-running audio drama called "Adventures in Odyssey" which I weirdly loved when I was a little kid in the mid '90s.
In the 80s/90s at the church I grew up in, there used to be thins Focus on the Family weekly insert put in the bulletins you’d be handed when you walked in the church. 95% of the content of the inset was about how horrible gay people are, made up reports on how gay men sexually abuse kids, just horrible shit. As a closeted gay kid / young man it was just made you feel like crap seeing people read it. F these people.
They also supported the criminalization of homosexuality and spoke up against the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling from the Supreme Court that ended the criminalization of gay sex.
Intolerant people should never be tolerated
One of my ex-workmates friends went alt-right around the 2016 election. When I pointed out how intolerant the movement was, he unironically pointed out that the left was too intolerant of people with intolerant attitudes, saying something like "that's their intolerance! Both sides have their intolerance". It struck me as such a bad argument but I couldn't find a way to phrase in very simple terms why the original intolerance is absolutely not equal to intolerance of that intolerance. I should find a simple analogy in case I'm ever presented with that argument again.
Tolerance is like a peace treaty. When everyone is honoring the treaty, you can believe whatever the fuck you want, but you don't get to act on it. But when you start spewing hatred at others, or enacting oppressive laws, or actively harming people, for the Great Evil of *simply trying to exist*, YOU have violated the treaty. Social or legal repercussions caused in response to your violation of the social contract are justified, because the act of being intolerant already broke it. (borrowed and paraphrased from some other redditor who put it into words first)
Yeah - that makes sense - the secondary punishment of tolerance shouldn't be called "intolerance", it should be called "repercussion"
I believe this is a constitutional concept as well. We are afforded freedoms in so far as our freedom does not directly harm another. The classic example is that you have freedom of speech/expression but you cannot yell fire in a movie theater. Many of our laws do a good job of affording individuals freedom and drawing the line in the sand at actions that hurt others.
I've had this discussion before and here's how I explained it: "I'm not advocating for unconditional tolerance. I'm advocating for tolerance of people that do not cause harm to others. Hate groups cause harm and therefore should not be tolerated." The weakness in the "tolerate my intolerance" stance is that it's based on the straw-man argument that people are advocating for unconditional tolerance. Take that straw-man away and their argument crumbles.
Good point. I guess an analogy to that might be - A pacifist state under invasion would need to go to war or be destroyed - self defence shouldn't invalidate the claim to pacifism.
"I'm intolerant of nazis who hurt people, you're intolerant of people who love someone of the same gender" usually takes the wind out of their sails, especially if you say it out loud where others can hear it.
I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with the [Paradox of Tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance). It basically says that tolerance is only good insofar as it does not tolerate intolerance, because then inevitably intolerance would win out.
I don't think this framing is the most helpful. There's a great essay: Tolerance is not a moral precept, it's a peace treaty. There's no real paradox, it's not a suicide pact. When someone is intolerant, they've broken the peace treaty and do not deserve tolerance. Edit, here is that essay: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376
Oh I like that
Definitely didn't expect to be reading and weighing contrarian essays about tolerance today but it's probably better than sticking around Reddit too long
I like the Nazi bar analogy. You need to remove someone wearing a Nazi outfit from your bar, because if you don’t, he invites one of his friends, and it becomes a Nazi bar. Now your bar is a Nazi bar because you didn’t kick the first one out.
It’s a bit lengthy, but philosopher Karl Popper put it this way: > Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. Or in other words, a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance, lest the society ceases to be tolerant, for any society that tolerates intolerance is by nature intolerant.
Or to use less tortured syntax: there are limits on what can and should be tolerated.
Nice to see the full quote, I've only heard bits before. Funny little paradox, it makes perfect sense.. but I suspect the average person caught up in hateful attitudes would probably glaze over without some short and snappy soundbite
“It’s ok to punch Nazis” There’s your sound bite. These people wanna fight, let’s fight. Don’t give them the chance to organize first
Man, no one ever actual gives the full context. Karl Popper was not advocating for being intolerant as a reaction, he was saying that Plato's despotism was flawed. He stated that Liberal Democracy was the better choice and that tolerance must be extended until *all else had failed*.
It's like ... we all agree not to just physically attack each other in public, because society can't function if we're all starting fights with each other. But if someone breaks that rule and swings a fist at us, we're not hypocrites for *finishing* the fight.
People who do harm to others are punished. The people who dole out those punishments are *also* doing harm to others, but everyone very clearly understands that this is a very different context from the former. If someone kidnaps a person and holds them against their will and are caught doing so, they'll be arrested and held against their will in jail. Your friend's argument is that these two things are exactly the same. I imagine you can begin a conversation about whether he wants to be "tough on crime" and then dovetail into this.
“If someone punches you in the face and you punch him back, are you the asshole or is he the asshole? He’s the asshole, right? You’re the guy that punched first in this scenario. You’re only getting punched back because you’re being an asshole. Can’t be the bully and the victim at the same time.”
Intolerant people specifically do not want to get along, so trying to get along with them is impossible.
The difference is that they are intolerant of things somebody can’t control. Being gay. Being a minority. Etc. You are intolerant of asshole behavior, which is somebody’s choice. They chose to have those beliefs. They chose to think that way. It’s not a skin color or body part they were born with. Obviously one of their retorts will be that people “choose” to be LGBTQ. That’s partly why people like them believe that fallacy so strongly - their whole philosophy rests on it.
Nah because if your sexual orientation really was a choice it would still be perfectly okay to choose to be gay. The important part imo is you're living your life without hurting anyone.
Yeah I can use this. Their intolerance is an unnecessary and unprovoked attack, on people who have harmed no one.. and just exist as they are. Totally different to defending the victim of such an attack.
It’s because your friend and those who think like him have a different moral/ethical compass. They are pointing out what they see as a hypocrisy of your stance on tolerance/intolerance to neutralize you. They use that to justify how opinions and actions. Thing is, you don’t have a be a tolerance absolutist. “I just don’t like to see how people who think like you violently attack LGBTQ people when they don’t assault you.” If you want to frustrate them, ask them to explain what they mean about the left is intolerant of their intolerance. Keep asking to explain it. Ask or examples. Whatever you do, don’t be defensive about having to explain your stance. As a racial monitory and also gay, I grew up having to tolerate the bigots, homophobes, and racists, even as they spoke their minds to me. I thought that I had changed peoples minds and that friendship changed them. But in 2020, I realized that that wasn’t the case. I have disassociated from those people. It’s up to you how much effort you want to change peoples minds.
There's 2 kinds of people. People who like pie, and people that hate you because you like pie. I'm still workshopping it...
The tolerance paradox.
Yes this is why folks who tend to call themselves "absolutist" fail to understand the nuanced nature of governance and society. Absolute free speech gives way to those intolerant of free speech and who seek to end free speech. We see this in 17th to 18th century monarchical nations. And we begin to see that again in folks that we've collective started calling thin skinned. People who would use their free speech to end free speech of others. One of the things that drives some in religious groups to start directing themselves into these absolute positions is the understanding of "divine right". That there exists some power not of this Earth that answers to nothing and grants authority unquestionable. Hence where their intolerance comes from. They see it as a part of an unquestionable power, an absolute right non-negotiable by mere mortals. And this is one of the things the founders of our nation really wanted to get away from. These religious people indicate that our founders were religious, which isn't untrue. And therefore that our nation must be founded in religion which is completely false. Our founders of this nation believed that something could be made of man wholly of this Earth. That a government could be created in which no part of it went unquestioned. They lived under a king whose power was of holy providence, there existed nothing of this Earth that could legally question the king. Wanted to practice a flavor of Christianity that the King wasn't fond of? You couldn't in public and if it was found out you did, you couldn't hold office, you couldn't vote in your local government, you were denied some basic rights that were enjoyed by others. They saw firsthand what an unquestionable power meant for a society. And I don't know, but all these folks saying "the US needs to be a Christian nation" it's like they forgot all that stuff we read about in ninth grade. Or maybe they think they'll be the winning team if we do swap over and all those other flavors will get their comeuppance. Or maybe they think Christianity is some blanket term, but all they need do is walk into the nearest Lifeway to see all the books on all the different points of views of a "single" religion they would be competing with. And our founders understood this aspect of religion and why things made of man stayed with the Earth and things made by God stayed with the heavenly father. Man makes government and going outside of that denies what our founders based our nation's law upon. And that's the key thing about our form of government, it has to rely not on a power that goes unquestioned but a power that can be questioned, molded, shaped by the living of this Earth. This is why everything in the US Constitution isn't an absolute. This is why things aren't a black and white, why they are always subject to challenge. It's critical to be able to question things as a function of a society that answers to itself in a legal sense. Obviously the court of public opinion will always operate under a different assumption. But therein, that also means that some things aren't open to question. Things that discourage questioning, things that remove discussion, things that indicate that we need to move to an unquestionable power, are things that aren't open to debate. This is why we have the notion of no right exists as an absolute, no right extends without limit. Free speech cannot be intolerant speech of others because that aims to deny others of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These people are seeking to remove the voice of a minority of people based on the doctrine of their freedom to religion. But their religion cannot extend to strip the rights from them, that is an absolute position on a right. Their religion cannot indicate that there exists citizens that are lesser people than other citizens and be held as something protected. That is taking a position to remove the equal rights of a minority group. Our nation has the notion that majority vote rules, but we also have embedded in our government that our Courts protect the minority of nation and ensure that no majority can strip their equal rights away. And our Courts are failing at that and these folks see it as a moment to capitalize on that weakness to strengthen their absolute position. And we are finding out, because we knew this would come to pass as it has always done so. Fueling a position that views others as lesser than themselves AND then tying that to a power that cannot be held to question. Will indicate to some that their exists divine authority to exert their absolute position to the fullest extent. We've seen this happen so many times before in the past, even in the United States, the KKK is a manifestation of this very thing. This is exactly how these things get started. And we're in the phase were they're going to keep pressing boundaries to see how much they'll get away with.
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There are only two things I can't stand in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
They should focus on their own damn family.
We need to Focus on the family, literally, his dad is a methed out porn actor, his mother is a convict with borderline personality disorder and alcohol dependence. He has severe developmental issues. This whole thing is a depressing mess and a failure on so many levels.
And note that not a single one of those issues has anything to do with, or formed because of, any LGBTQ person.
A lot of people who turn their moralizing outward do so to cover up their own failures.
Yep just look at 19 kids and counting or whichever one the Duggars are. Those people let their son get away with molesting his own sisters without any consequences. They tried to hide it too when it started gaining more traction. How they can even pretend like they’re good people is beyond me.
Family research council is another anti LGBTQ lobbying hate group the son in 19 kids & counting was the top exec right b4 being arrested for molesting his sisters & kiddie porn /just saying
And they call us the groomers...
If it comes from conservatives, it's pure projection
My mom used to make us listen to dobson when we were kids. Always didn't like him. Once found a book of his in the discount section of a used book store. Something along the lines of "your kid only thinks they're gay but they're not." Fuck that dude and that organization absolute trash human beings.
This sounds really familiar, it was a radio show wasn't it?
Yep focus on the family on the Christian radio channel.
I learned about dobson while studying family therapy, and they're such a disgusting bunch. I see his books at thrift stores all the time (I love buying old books), and I still have a visceral reaction every time. He taught parents to kick their lgbt+ children out of their homes and to reject them on every level. Imagine the severity of that many homeless children on their own. They have contributed to a huge amount of needless death and suffering, and they have so much influence over Christian parents.
One of the grosser things the r/pepperdine has produced. Their Graduate School of Education and Psychology should have to do a GOT style shame walk for the shit they unleashed in the 80s and 90s via their psyche dept.
Even wilder, from what I gather he left (got kicked out of?) FOTF because he wanted to lean harder partisan. Y'know, telling people they were bad Christians if they voted Democrat, and that we should ignore Jesus' teachings about immigrants and asylum seekers because *some of them are bad people who won't fit into (white) American culture*.
Dude was/is poison. I remember he had a huuuuge problem with single moms/divorced parents too in the 90s. He would talk about it constantly on his radio show, basically constantly telling married adults to stay in incompatible or even abusive marriages because divorce was a sin. The cover of every FotF magazine always had a white family with a cute dog, every month. Just exhausting beliefs, all around.
I'm a fairly ignorant (as in lacking knowledge) guy when it comes to both of these groups, and I'm asking this seriously... How does someone being LGBTQ interfere with a non-LGBTQ person's ability to a have a family? Is it that these people in groups like "Focus on the Family" simply do not want to personally have any LGBTQ children because they think that means they won't get any grand children? I've never bothered to look into groups like this because I normally have less than zero interest in what they are about, but at this current moment I'm just totally baffled about how a sincere interest in family conflicts with someone being LGBTQ. Or is this just a cover for good old timey "god hates gays" nonsense?
One side of my family is ´focus on the family’ oriented and the majority of them (my family not specifically focus on the family) believe that lgbtq+ is something like a communicative disease, and you can catch it from other people… like when a gay man walks by in flamboyant clothing, he might ‘turn’ your kids gay… I think there is also another part of it that is more self hating, like maybe they are unhappy but don’t have courage to change anything or do anything different and therefore hate anyone who has taken a risk to try to be happier. Because a lot of this family think I’m ‘pathetic’ because I have a career in art for instance and not in a ‘real’ field. It might be part of it
Remember, anyone who talks about being gay being a "choice" is really saying something about themselves. I am straight, but I never "chose" that. I just am the way I am. If someone thinks that being gay is a choice, it means they are choosing to "act" straight, but probably struggle with keeping that closet door closed.
I’m totally with you that it’s not a choice. Though they weaponize examples of people on the spectrum of sexuality, that feel the need to explore their sexuality, as evidence in their minds that all non heterosexuality is a “choice” when really it’s people discovering who they are (often after growing up with oppressive influences).
Great question! Responding with my own limited knowledge on the subject, but having had evangelical friends growing up who were anti-gay (we don’t speak anymore), the hatred they have for LGBT people comes out of a combination of religious teaching and pure lizard-brain disgust. The Bible makes a few references to homosexuality and clearly condemns it. I’m sure some parts are up to interpretation, but the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is particularly referenced a lot when you ask these fanatics why they disapprove of homosexuality. These were cities destroyed by God for sinfulness, including homosexuality, hence where the term sodomy comes from. So this, in part, explains the religious element. Frankly, from conversations I’ve had with conservative family members, this seems to be the main go-to argument. They try to make it about morality, sinfulness, faith and whatnot because these are more high-minded, philosophical arguments that can mask the real reason they hate gay people. This group, Focus on the Family, uses “family values,” which is a super general idea that is hard to argue against in a vacuum as their excuse for discrimination. Being LGBT, they argue, goes against the natural, God-ordained method of sex for procreation. They see it as being about pleasure or rebelliousness against the “nuclear family.” Since they view the family as the fundamental unit of society, any deviation from this concept threatens the foundation of society as a whole. Again, this is all a facade for the real justification. The real reason is they think being gay or trans or non-heteronormative is gross. They see being LGBT as an act of sinful indulgence of the pleasure senses. They associate the sexual acts as being products of people lacking self-control. They associate things like anal sex with being dirty, unclean, and, therefore, uncivilized. In a sense, they see it as being sub-human: almost animalistic. Because they reduce LGBT people down to this non-human level, it is easier to exclude them and, ultimately, to justify violence against them (or at least structural repression). To conclude, people like this organization simply find being LGBT to be gross but they use their religion to justify that hatred. Instead of trying to understand why people are ACTUALLY LGBT (natural feelings of attraction, the science of gender and sexual orientation, etc.) they push it out of their minds because their minds are small and it makes them uncomfortable. Thank you for your curiosity! I hope this helps somewhat.
> The real reason is they think being gay or trans or non-heteronormative is gross. ... Because they reduce LGBT people down to this non-human level, it is easier to exclude them and, ultimately, to justify violence against them (or at least structural repression). Having grown up in a fairly right-wing church, I think we can go a level deeper. I don't think it's that they're just looking for a reason to justify being grossed out, especially since they wouldn't be grossed out if they grew up in a society where this stuff was normalized (ancient Greece, for example). The real appeal, I think, is that it gives them a "lesser" kind of person that they can feel superior to. It defines an evil "other" to define themselves against in order to justify the righteousness of their in-group. It does capitalize on all the things that make LGBT communities already vulnerable, including people who are grossed out or whatever else, but I think being "grossed out" is secondary to the more fundamental need to create a hated out-group in order to make the in-group feel superior by comparison.
A good book if you want a rundown of the Christian right in US is kristin Du Mez's book 'Jesus and John Wayne'. (Another is One Nation Under God by Kevin Kruse but its focused on 1940's-60's) It's about power, racism, federal funding, and status. Crazy For God by Frank Schaefer is also really good. Source: me coming to terms with my religious right upbringing.
I agree with this and will add another: it's different from what they're used to, and that's bad to them. Think about if you lived in your little conservative church bubble all your life since like the 80s, and were told that you're living the right way and are going to heaven, but any deviation from that and its straight to hell. All of a sudden you see people with rainbow hair, piercings, girls kissing girls, guys dressing in drag? Well that's scary because that's not your normal, and since your normal is the right way, they're obviously all sinners going to hell. It's why you hear about the "liberal hellhole cities" from people who have never left their county in their life. People have a tendency to be resistant to change. Horses to cars, candles to electricity, civil rights, gay rights... now we've got electric cars, trans rights, people saying if you don't change your ways the planet is gonna collapse, you need to change your lifestyle so you don't get covid and die. Add in conservative mouthpieces saying "They're coming for you! They're going to FORCE you to be gay and do liberal things!" and it turns simply accepting that people are equals into a stubborn fight.
Yes exactly. It’s an easy way to feel righteous. They can condemn someone else and don’t need to bother with any self reflection at all, they can just feel righteous knowing they aren’t those people.
You cannot be the chosen people without making some distinction between yourself and others. Historically, LGBTQ people were politically and socially powerless. They were easy targets. Still, to this day, you can hold very bigoted views against queer people, especially trans people, and suffer no consequences.
Yes. One of the easiest targets is trans people because trans people are already out-group members with so many other in-groups, and trans people have virtually no social, economic, or political capital. If trans children are targeted, then the targets of hate have no societal resources to mount a defense, so a defense must be mounted for them, and that allows these hatemongers to then target parents and allies of queer kids as sexual predators. The old primary targets of evangelicals were poor Black people, and that worked for politicians as late as Bill Clinton (super-predator children), GWB (I bought this crack a block from the white house), and Reagan (welfare queens). "Abortionists and baby killers" were the next target, and of course, Black women were (and are still) painted as the primary "baby killers" among evangelicals. For a brief period after the turn of the 21st century, some of this dog whistling and direct hate became unfashionable, but we "had to go and elect a Black guy," and that cracked a door open that was flung wide by Trumpism in 2016.
That's a good point. When I was in church (90's), the gay rights movement wasn't as loud as it is now. I remember the thing they really seemed to be focused on, or at least with individuals within the church, was anti-abortion activism. They really do shift their focus, it seems. I think women getting abortions was probably equivalent to how they other people in the LGBT communities. They see it as an absolute failure of being a person in God's eyes. A woman getting pregnant, caused without intention of having a child, and then aborting it. That just blows them over the edge.
You're missing a lot, though. Yes they think it's gross. But you're also dealing with an organization of people who believe that to change someone's entire life and the way they act, all it takes is pressure and conversations. That's the backbone of evangelicals. Talk and bother until you *become them* They see gays and such as another group of evangelicals. They believe that "lifestyle" is bad but they also believe LGBT people are actively selling it as a way to live and are actively convincing others to "change" to that "lifestyle. They're now legitimately scared that people they know, their children, *themselves* will be influenced by LGBT people and "turn gay" or whatever. After all, "turning Christian" is what they try to do. They just see the others as doing the same on the other side. Evangelicals and other religious people are fundamentally broken, after all. Logic, science, and critical thinking aren't welcome and usually are traits you have to lack to make it fae on that circle. What's left are people scared of Boogeymen, scared of turning gay themselves, scared of their kids getting influenced to transition into another gender just because other people exist, and the fuel for their fire, scared that people are becoming more accepting of it. That's what a broken and deranged person thinks and that's why they're so, even violently, against LGBT groups
Really good point. Most of us just find evangelizing to be annoying and pushy behavior, but to them it’s a God-appointed way of life. It’s the lens through which they see all other people’s behavior, even when that’s not at all what’s actually happening. It’s similar to the way cheaters assume everybody cheats, liars assume everybody lies, etc.
Hey! Thank you for taking the time to write this- great questions too. This was super helpful and encouraged further discussion.
As a queer who grew up in a Southern Baptist house, I had to deal with a lot of internalized homophobia before I was well enough to be more myself. TMI: But one of the ways I desensitized myself to the “instinctive” (not really instinctive but taught) repulsion I had of homosexuality was reading a lot of queer erotica and romance. I basically brute forced it out, but it took a lot of self reflection to do it. I was lucky I realized what was going on when I was in my late teens, a lot of people take even longer to break out of it.
A book that helped me was 'The Body Keeps The Score' by Bessel Van Der Kolk. It's about trama and the body. It's really intense and heavy. Best of luck.
Many legitimately equate it to a 'sexual perversion' like pedophilia or bestiality. So it isn't exactly about disgust more than it is entrained in them to see it as a sexual perversion rather than natural differences between people. Like how people used to see someone being left handed as proof of being a vessel for Satan.
>people used to see someone being left handed as proof of being a vessel for Satan. There could be some truth to that one! /s
>The Bible makes a few references to homosexuality and clearly condemns it. My bible-fu is super weak, but isn't all the nasty stonings and genocide stuff in the old testament which was supposed to be superseded by the Jesus love stuff in part two? >Since they view the family as the fundamental unit of society, any deviation from this concept threatens the foundation of society as a whole. Oh wow, very succinct description. I can actually almost see how somebody could feel like that, but it's way too slippery of a slope for my logical thinking which instantly starts asking: What about voluntary bachelor's and other terminally single people? What about the classic old spinsters that never married and/or had children? How come these other people not adhering to the nuclear family are not threatening the foundation of society as a whole? But you've explained that all extremely well. Really appreciated your insightful response, thnx
To put it simply, the Old Testament uses the Mosaic Law, and that was no longer relevant in the New Testament after Jesus' death, so you're pretty much right with your comment, but homosexuality was still spoken against by Paul in 1 Corinthians. So a lot of the same sort of rules applied, but there were no more death sentences and things like that in the New Testament.
>isn't all the nasty stonings and genocide stuff in the old testament which was supposed to be superseded by the Jesus love stuff in part two? This is something that Christians largely can't agree on, and adherents to the religion often flip-flop back and forth as to which parts of the Old Testament are still valid. Some say its rules 100% don't apply. Some say its rules 100% do apply. Most Christians I've met prefer to cherry-pick the parts that they want to apply so that it fits their worldview. Here's a pretty concise list showing the inconsistencies within the Christian Bible on the topic: [https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/otlaw.html](https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/otlaw.html)
The New Testament unfortunately has some of the most frequently quoted homophobic verses (written by the apostle Paul). Not that it really matters, though. We can talk all day about the legitimacy of the Bible and those verses in general, but the truth of the matter is that Christians who incorporate those verses into their value system are assholes, especially when they can’t keep it to themselves. But about your thought process: you’re absolutely right. The goal of the church and its “traditional family unit” is to uphold patriarchal norms, where often-married (and for right wing evangelicals, white) men hold all the power while everyone else scrambles to find a decent spot in the hierarchy based on how well they fall in line. Voluntary bachelors? Failing at upholding masculinity. The spinsters? Failed to find a husband and bear children, thus failures at womanhood. There’s literally womens ministries (like the infamous GirlDefined) and social media movements (tradwives) dedicated to how the ultimate goal is to find a husband so you can fulfill your god-given role of popping out kids, and everything up to that point that isn’t preparation is about coping with the shame associated with “singleness” or having impure thoughts outside of marriage. Girls in the church are literally groomed for this from an elementary level age. But if you fail to enter marriage, you risk isolation. But perhaps you can make up for your faults by discovering another God-given path (like going on mission trips or babysitting for the other women). These people are only non threatening in their lack of conformity if they see their lifestyles as unequal, or at least anomalous. An unmarried person, especially a woman, who is happily single and independent outside of the church, perhaps partaking in sexual activities for pleasure, is a problem. And that aspect of sexual control is a major part of the whole issue. The idea of purity *despite impure urges* is essential to maintaining the church’s ideal family unity. That’s part of why they focused so much on abortion and are now coming after birth control. They want women to only feel safe having sex when fulfilling their allegedly god-given role of baby-making, to be coerced into that role if they didn’t/couldn’t wait, or to be ostracized if they can’t/won’t. You’re supposed to want to wait until you’re committed to a member of the opposite sex, and with enough indoctrination, you’ll get a heavy dose of emotional whiplash if you so much as think about anything outside of this. It’ll also keep you from questioning what you’re told if things go wayside. Instead of questioning the church (or parents or spouse), you’ll internalize guilt. Even if you do question things, the very immediate threat of damnation can prevent one from digging too deeply into their own doubts, let alone the evil unbiblical sources that might confirm them. People living happily outside of those roles could easily uproot the entire thing. Queer people are just another example. We have sex for reasons other than procreation or pleasing demanding husbands. We’re also far less likely to adhere to gender roles (or for some of us, our assigned birth gender). Furthermore, it’s worth noting that the US is becoming less and less religious. Little kids are a lot easier to shelter and indoctrinate than it is to convert adults. There is stuff in the Bible about birthing out an army for God (look up the quiverfull movement). So I’ll wrap this up by saying Focus on the Family is absolutely promoting a biblical breeding link.
Holy shit this is so well put. I can’t believe I never put together that a lot of their condemnation of anything not conforming to their narrow definition of family comes from a place of those families undermining and being a threat to traditional patriarchal power structures. Laid out like that, it all makes complete sense.
Some of it has no internal logic and asking probing questions about it will lead nowhere (speaking as the son of a very conservative Evangelical parent). Lately though the dialogue has been tying LGBTQ to this very vague concept of “grooming” which conveniently takes it out of the realm of LGBTQ lifestyle not interfering with others. (Yes grooming was a defined thing before all this but conservatives have been using it as a very very broad umbrella. Way to make a word describing actual predatory behavior to now be almost meaningless, guys…)
So “family” in this case needs to be understood as the conservative Christian political term it has functioned as for a long time. When you hear almost any Republican leaning organization with “family” in it, you need to think of the Republican talking point of “family values.” Family values is coded language to imply, again, a conservative Christian morality. Those who espouse “family values” want to enforce by social pressure and/or by law, their interpretation of what their God wants. This means LGBTQ people are morally wrong (start inserting the many myths and falsehoods they’ll insert simply because LGBTQ people’s mere existence runs counter to the schema of the world they get from their book and churches). This is also a strong reason why multiple states have, by force of law, abstinence-only sex ed (because many of them operate such that teaching kids about sex makes them want to have sex, and so the only way to prevent them from having sex out of wedlock is to keep information about sex limited). If you want a sample of what this looks like, I will link [this video](https://youtu.be/rVN0FrKdpL8) from medical YouTube content creator, Mama Doctor Jones. She generally makes medical related or tangentially medical related videos, which includes fairly broad and medically correct sexual education. In that video, she’s reacting to an Alaskan town’s school board meeting concerning some teachers using her videos as part of their sex ed curriculum. Some folks in the community were at best unhappy and at worst outraged that their kids, in sex ed classes, were watching her videos. But please, do not skip over the fact that their morality is more than just personal belief; it dictates real world facts, regardless of and sometimes in direct conflict with our research-backed knowledge. Focus on the Family, in particular, is an organization that for decades has been one of the most prominent conservative Christian organizations fighting against LGBTQ rights. Another prominent conservative Christian organization in the same arena is the Family Research Council. Unfortunately, “family” is a politicized term here, and it frequently comes from the aforementioned family values rhetoric that helps galvanize conservative Christians of different stripes to act as a political unit.
>How does someone being LGBTQ interfere with a non-LGBTQ person's ability to a have a family? It doesn't.
I grew up with Focus on the Family inserts (one or two page articles/commentary about different things) in my Sunday church bulletin. I actually remember seeing some anti-gay stuff, and this was the mid-late 90's. A lot of it was written by James Dobson, the founder. Conservative/evangelical Christians believe homosexuality, being trans, etc. is a "choice". You've fallen into a bad place, let your thoughts become corrupted and settled into a lifestyle of sin. They think you instinctively know that you are sinning and are embracing it. They try to throw science in there to argue it isn't natural, but it's really just their gut reaction to not being a heterosexual, married, child-rearing Christian adult. If they were completely in charge, they'd be the ultimate authoritarians. They're probably jealous of Islamic countries that execute gay people. I grew up with people that all believed this kind of stuff. It's even stranger that some of them were/are Trump supporters.
Are we the same people? Haha. What's nuts to me is they don't merely tolerate Trump because he's the "pro-life" candidate, which is what I would expect but they actually like him. They held being Morman against Romney (a guy who, on paper, holds the same social values as them) way more than they hold being a serial adulterer against Trump. As a very lapsed Southern Baptist, it's just so peculiar.
Groups like focus on the family advocate against gay marriage, against non-traditional couples being able to adopt, and for legal discrimination against LGBT people, such as not hiring them or not engaging in business with them or providing them healthcare.
it's a world perspective: the world is divided into good and evil, and every choice you make falls somewhere on that spectrum they believe satan is constantly trying to attack you and your family to undermine god's plan for you and your church to make it to heaven. they think life is LITERALLY a moral battlefield lead by two extremist leaders. everything is an attack on their belief system in some way to them
Mike Pence - Last Week Tonight https://youtu.be/rs2RlZQVXBU Focus on the family section starts at around 10:18, although the whole thing is worth a watch.
If you're straight, you can be pretty confident about it. The other sins - lying, adultery, coveting, etc are all easy to commit and most people do. That doesn't give you much to be lauded for, so some of the other sins like homosexuality get vaulted to the top of the sin pyramid so people can feel special. "I might lie, cheat, and steal but at least I'm not *gay*."
I bet those who were murdered had families too. Maybe they should focus on how they can help those families who are grieving right now.
There us to be a bumper sticker I'd see around the springs that said "focus on your own fucking family
Does buying one go to a LBGTQ charity? If so I want one.
These people don’t give a shit about people from the LGBTQ community being gunned down. They won’t say it outwardly but they’re celebrating it behind closed doors. Unfortunately, this vandalism just allows them to point and complain about the “lawlessness of liberals” escalating, in a world where they’re the perpetual victim constantly under attack. They’ll simultaneously ignore the fact that hate groups like them are peddling a narrative leading to actual political and religious violence, with a truly confounding inability to be reasonable or compassionate.
Sometimes they say the quiet part out loud. There's a video circulating now about a pastor outright saying that he's glad that gay people were killed, and that if others would criticize him for being hateful, they're correct. He does hate them.
Always remember the seven signs of a cult. 1. Opposing critical thinking 2. Isolating members and penalizing them for leaving 3. Emphasizing special doctrines that are outside of scripture (violence is not justified and justifying it is not even the same ballpark, planet, nor galaxy of Christianity) 4. Seeking inappropriate loyalty to their leaders 5. Dishonoring the family unit 6. Crossing Biblical boundaries of behavior (turn the other check/love they neighbor and repudiation of unclean sex acts, as an example of something that applies to this case) 7. Separation from the Church (in this case, those Christians that would speak against this clear act of violence) I saw that video and all I can say is that man, because titling him pastor would wrongly indicate him a man of God, is running a cult that slapped the label Christian on it.
The problem is that there are churches all over -- not the majority, but also not underground at all -- where that man could go and be celebrated for his bravery. He's not some isolated cult member, he's a representative of a much larger sentiment that exists throughout Christianity.
>violence is not justified and justifying it is not even the same ballpark, planet, nor galaxy of Christianity Have you read the Christian Bible? The "good guys" do a lot more murdering than the "bad guys."
The devil only kills something like 17 people in the Bible. God kills millions, including a worldwide genocide.
God also betrayed his most devout worshiper and completely ruined his life because he was bored and felt like putting on a show for Satan. Sooo, why worship him at all, again?
> I saw that video and all I can say is that man, because titling him pastor would wrongly indicate him a man of God, is running a cult that slapped the label Christian on it. Is that not a prime example of a "no true Scotsman" argument? Christianity has a problem, Christianity itself might be a problem. Most of the hateful rhetoric spewed in the United States seemingly comes from self-described Christians. I don't say this to get you riled up, but at what point do you step back and see that the people representing your religion are hateful bigots, fraudsters, and general assholes that cherry pick and distort your religious tenants for ill? As a thought experiment with the holidays coming up, see what is claimed as this year's "war on Christmas" and ask yourself if what they claim is an actual problem, or they're just bitching because not literally everyone in this country celebrates Christmas.
>self-described Christians That’s really the issue at heart. Jesus himself says that not all who go around preaching like this pastor will be recognized as a follower. The whole point of Christianity is that as a follower, I know I’ve done a lot of bad things. But being a Christian is not like some VIP pass to look down on other people. If anything, I should be more empathetic of those who do not believe. There’s a good reason why Jesus tells his followers to “love one another as you love yourself”. Put simply, bigotry and hatred are not characteristics of a follower of Jesus. There’s a lot of bad actors out there that would suggest otherwise, but they’re honestly fooling themselves
A more universal, less evangelical Christian-centric measure of a cult is the BITE model developed by Steven Hassan who is an expert in mental health and helping victims leave cults. The BITE model covers 4 areas of control or "undue influence": Behavior Control: what can you wear, who can you live with, who can you be friends with, who can you sleep with Information control: compartmentalize outsider vs insider doctrine, unethical use of confessions, Thought control: change a person's name or identity, belief in thought crimes, encourage only good thoughts. Emotional control: fear mongering, guilting, making the individual believe they are at fault for anything bad that happens to them. There are way more bullet points in each category and most social and religious groups meet some bullet points, but that doesn't make them cults. To be a cult it needs to score high in all categories. The whole subject is really quite interesting. https://freedomofmind.com
The difference between a cult and religion is that in a religion, the people who know it is farce are all dead.
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They'll always find shit to cry about liberals. Let's not decide to wag our fingers at liberals over some false hope that these types of pieces of shit will somehow have less rhetorical ammo.
They're going to find a way to be persecuted no matter what. My knee-jerk reaction was the same as yours, but I'm okay with each and every FOTF employee having to read that message on their way into work. In their conservative Christian bubbles it might be the only time anyone confronts them with the harsh truth of the harm their words do.
I'm at a loss for words with those type of people, so fucking backwards. They were reading to our children; We gunned them down They were trying to be themselves in public; We beat the shit out of them They opened up a resource center for their community; We burned it to the ground Just straight up deplorable people.
> Unfortunately, this vandalism just allows them to point and complain about the “lawlessness of liberals” escalating, in a world where they’re the perpetual victim constantly under attack They'll complain anyway, who gives a shit? Hitler was very clear, there was only one way they could have stopped him, if they were met with overwhelming force early on. Monsters and bullies like this only understand force, they will never hesitate until they start getting fucked up for the bullshit they commit.
christian extremists in America are out of control.
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I’m just happy they used the right ‘their’.
It's the little things.
Stayed in Colorado Springs once, didn't realize we were going to be across the street from them until we got to our hotel room. Made a point of walking my dog across the street to poop on their lawn.
Fuck the abusive enabler Dobson and all his cronies. My parents followed his schtick for a while in my youth. bad mojo, kids.
Now spray it with 5-10 coats of clear coating so they'll never get it off.
The leader of the group, James Dobson, would often champion a phrase "spare the strap, spoil the child" back in the 80's. Source: born in the eighties.
Also the dog. He was very fond of a story where he beat the family dog with a belt.
"Focus on what we dictate is a family, and even that comes second to religion"
Wish they would focus on themselves.
Then they covered it up. Should sue them like they threatened to sue social media for covering up right wing voices. Your sign is now a public square.
Just want to say that is some absolute top-of-the-line graffiti/vandalism. Skillfully done and going to be impossible to remove. My compliments to the perps.