If groups like these didn't exist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church
In this particular case if they all disappeared I would not feel any remorse.
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Comments
Hey Dude!
You're right!
Ya know, the Earth is very over-populated and we are using all resources at an unsustainable rate.
I think it would be very good if all reactionary fundamentalists of any type and all those who are consistently rotten to others or to particular minorities would also vanish. I hope that they would constitute a significant fraction of the global population.
If the magical entity that accomplished this task decided that my partner and I should also go, because of always bad-mouthing haters and money hungry conservatives, I'd consent; it would be worth it to our Mother, the Earth!
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Ready for work, 1992.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
You know... that's not a
You know... that's not a good idea. That's like the nihilistic approach to end all suffering. Just blow up all life to achieve it.
Seriously, I think chauvinism is an inherent human trait. In the end everybody like's to believe they're superior to someone else... we can only try that it won't darken our relationships with other people.
Some people sadly preach hatred, but blowing them up is no solution - it will only create more. I guess one should seperate those hate groups and reeducate the members.
Have some faith in humanity.
Beyogi
Here's one response to
Here's one response to them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e5hRLbCaCs
Shameless plug
Here's another response to the Westboro Batshit Church (the Devil made me do it...):
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/10043/god-hates-warners
~hugs, Veronica
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
what would make this world a better place
If people like me didn't exist
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Dear Katie...
...my life has been enriched and strengthened and blessed by your presence here. I'm glad you exist and I wish your heart knew the same strength and love and encouragement you've imparted to me. Thank you, Katie.
Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
Katie
The earth would be a darker place without you and others like you. You are friendly, loving and a wonderful storyteller.
If you don't value yourself
how will others? Stop the self-pity and start living, you only get one shot don't waste it.
Angharad
Angharad
what i was saying
I am part of the fundamentalist set. It's easy to dislike a group when you don't put a face to it isn't it. Isn't that exactly what certain members of the fundamentalist movement do? It's easy to lump people as sick, sexual-perverts who only desire is to have unnatural sex outside of the confines of what 'we' believe are the norms... this way we can condemn them without even knowing them. I believe, like the fundamentalist do, that we should shy away from sin the best we can. But true fundamentalist that hold the Bible as true, also know that we cannot live a sin-free life.
Now, I also include myself as being transgender and that MAY be sin, I am still unsure about it because I get stuck on the man should not be effeminate passage. I suppose my argument would be, am i really male, or am I simply disfigured (sort of like having a cleft palate, or born blind). It would be real easy if there was a passage where Jesus healed the transsexual and made them their mental gender (Please do not write this as a story).
I understand that we need to be on guard against those who are judgmental and hateful, but I don't believe being judgmental and hateful towards a whole philosophy of thinking because one congregation deviates from the norm of the group is counter productive. I read the article, they aren't even part of any Baptist convention, so isn't that saying something about the other fundamentalist out there.
so no, i wasn't asking for pity, i was trying to make people assess their value statements but had limited time.
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
I don't think anyone...
Was bashing legitimate fundamentalists. This group is NOT that, they are a hate group, plain and simple.
While I do disagree with fundamentalists in general, they are welcome to those beliefs as long as they don't try to discredit my beliefs. I'll let others do or believe whatever they want, I only ask the same courtesy.
If you read the wiki article, they aren't even Baptists really, and one of their hate targets are the Baptist "norm". In fact, it seems clear to me that they think they're the only group out there that "has it right".
This isn't a legitimate religious organization, Katie, far from it, this is a hate group, pure and simple. And this is what we were talking about the world being better off without. Perhaps if the group had called themselves something like "Topekan Hatemongers" you wouldn't have decided we were bashing the Baptist philosophy?
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
Perhaps Abgail
Perhaps you are right, maybe I was being over sensitive.
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
i think you're overreacting
i think you're overreacting on that group.
their "congregation" is cited to be 40 people. none of their public performances i could find, surpassed that number. even other hate groups distance themselves from them. all that is demonstrated by their actions is political impotence. and if nothing else, their "protests" rally counter-support for their targets, isn't -that- something positive?
here you go
Couldn't find anything? Here's a list of thier 9 worst! at one point they wanted to picket the funeral of a 9 year old girl who was killed in a shooting. Yet their belifs against her crumbled when they were offered air time on tv in exchange for her peacefull funeral.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/9-worst-funeral-pro...
ok, since you know it better
ok, since you know it better than i, would you please tell me: at which of those incidents where more than 40 people of that group involved?
Unfortunately...
Many many times, some of the smallest but loudest groups do some of the worst damage in this world.
Also, this particular hate group may be small, but there are many many more out there that are like them, or worse.
What seems most remarkable (not in a good way, though) is how this particular group seems to hate absolutely everything. They may not come out and say so, but I'm pretty sure they hate themselves too.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
I don't want to play down
I don't want to play down the additional grief their pickets cause for the families and friends of victims of hate crimes. Really, i don't. But what -I- find most remarkable, is that their picket lines, usually consisting of 10-20 people, and in some cases just 2-5, gets opposed by hundreds of people rallying in support of the breaved.
I read about half the Wiki article
In this country, they'd all be in an unit for the seriously mentally ill. They are a nasty little group of attention seeking wankers who need deep therapy. I suspect the hatred of homosexuality comes from repressed urges of the founder, who is probably a total cream puff.
It would be poetic justice if when one of them dies, ten thousand normal people turn up to celebrate and dance on the grave.
Angharad
Angharad
Mincing words
Can you stop doing so, please, and tell us what you really think?
I was just remembering a graveside scene in one of my stories. Not exactly dancing...
Dear Beyogi,
Maybe you misread my fantasy comment. I don't really believe anyone can, by wishing, cause anyone else to literally disappear (rather than "being disappeared" where one is kidnapped, arrested, etc., secretly held then secretly murdered and disposed of).
I certainly do not want to blow-up all life, but some anti-warming, anti-environmentalists seem willing to risk a major extinction event, which would include most people, because they think they are fighting a "culture war" against progressives, because they are anti-science (don't know how to think rationally or how to evaluate their sources of information), or mainly, because they're afraid they will lose money.
I'm not fantasizing about "ending all suffering", but reducing suffering in the medium term of 100 - 200 years. I believe Earth is overpopulated by people and their food animals and the situation is getting worse. As the oceans and atmosphere get farther from what is best for humans and all resources are depleted, there might be huge population crash, which would cause much more suffering. I was suggesting groups that, I think, cause much suffering now, to disappear in order to reduce overpopulation.
I think I'm close to your belief in inherent chauvinism; I just reverse it. I think xenophobia, fear of the stranger, is inherent, but that can be overcome by learning.
I also agree about "blowing them up"; if a missile or a plane or a suicide bomber kills a lot of people, the survivors will try to find out who did it and try and take revenge. If people mysteriously disappear, who will they blame? God? If groups slowly disappear, like over 5 or 10 years, what could anyone think? I also think I'm against groups with some kind of power who cause the suffering of others.
The Afgans didn't live under the Taliban's laws because they liked them, but because the Taliban had the power over them. The Navajo, Hopi and others dislike having pollution from the coal power plants in the Four Corners area poison their land, animals and people, but utilities, coal companies, etc. have money power and have bought laws that make the power plants more important than people's lives.
I think we all know about reactionary fundamentalists (not just fundamentalists) preaching, lobbying and buying votes against the interests of, and urging haters to attack LGBTQ people and laws or policies that support us.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Sure, They're Scum...
...but unintended consequences are a bitch!
Through their unmodulated and unhinged hate-mongering, they've forced many people to reexamine their beliefs, but perhaps not in the way they intended. Many observant members of saner Christian denominations have been inspired to stand up and declare aloud their beliefs in equality, charity and hospitality, those beliefs including sexual orientation and gender expression, to counter the impression that hatred is some part of Christian dogma.
Westboro Baptist is perhaps largely responsible for me joining the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) after a life of successful agnosticism. Having discovered a denomination that truly seemed to believe in, and practice, equality, and respect all people as having "that of God" within them, and not only that but actually practice marriage equality ten years before our state decided to legally recognize it, I was shocked. Shocked, I say! I decided I could help offset the batsh*t crazy denominations that preach hatred by joining a denomination that practiced love and equality. -- I know! It surprised me, too!
Picketing military funerals was a stroke of "genius," too! By doing that, they reached complacent, moderate people all across this country, people who said to themselves, "Wait... WTF? Are they serious? This makes no sense at all." And many people woke up and realized there are a lot worse things than being gay. In fact, many people thought of the gay people they knew, and started getting angry, angry at these rude, abusive, batsh*t crazy pickets and their cockamamie "religious" beliefs. And some of those newly angry people were forced to recognize the stupidity of bigotry, and to think about the slings and arrows faced by gay people and those who are gender-variant, and to consider, perhaps for the first time, how a decent person ought to treat others.
It also gave us songs, songs like "Born This Way," and Lily Allen's "F*** You," and many other songs to rally against hatred.
So, yeah, Westboro Baptist and Fred Phelps deserve to roast eternally in Hell's fires (which I don't believe in, but kind of hope exist for their sake) for causing a lot of grief and misery and indirectly fueling hate-crime killings, but they also woke up a lot of people who decided to combat that.
And I joined a religious denomination that doesn't care how I dress to worship.
___________________
Luckily, "plain dress" is obsolete in our Meeting, or it would cramp my style.