From John Shook, writing at the Center for Inquiry:
Religious people can be racist, and that’s not news. But are they more likely to be racist than non-religious people? A new study now confirms this hypothesis.
The February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review has published a meta-analysis of 55 independent studies conducted in the United States which considers surveys of over 20,000 mostly Christian participants. Religious congregations generally express more prejudiced views towards other races. Furthermore, the more devout the community, the greater the racism.
Those aren’t exactly replicas of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that the Christian Ku Klux Klan ceremoniously torch to spark fear.
And we know, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that Christians love torture, while the least support for torture comes from those who never attend religious services. 77% of American Evangelicals asked supported the invasion of Iraq, according to another Pew survey:
Solid majorities of white evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics favored the U.S. taking military action to end Saddam Hussein’s rule. Support was strongest among Evangelicals, 77 percent of whom supported war, compared with 62 percent of Catholics and mainline Protestants. But only 36 percent of African-American Protestants supported military action, and seculars — respondents who said they were atheists or had no religious affiliation — divided evenly on the question (44 percent in favor, 44 percent opposed).
Much of secular Europe, on the other hand, opposed the invasion of Iraq — Freedom Fries, anyone? Just out of curiosity, where and when does that whole living what we’ve more or less come to think of as a Christ-like life part kick in?
“From the Pope on down, through the Vatican and therefore through the lower echelons, the whole organisation, in my belief, is utterly anti-Christian and evil, as proven by centuries of torture, bloodshed, burnings, terrorism, and coverings-up of “the worst crime” known to man.
“And if Jesus Christ is to be seen in the vulnerable of this world, then all the church has done is crucify the man over and over and over again.
“If Christ was here, he would be burning down the Vatican. And I for one would be helping him.”
The Vatican has been thrown into chaos by reports that one of the Pope’s ceremonial ushers, as well as a member of the elite Vatican choir, were involved in a homosexual prostitution ring.
The allegations came to light after Italian newspapers published transcripts of phone calls recorded by police, who had been conducting an unrelated corruption investigation.
The tapes appear to record Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Nigerian Vatican chorister, about men he wanted brought to him for sexual purposes. Balducci was allegedly paying 2,000 euros ($2,714) for each man he met, according to the Irish Times.
I believe in the god of thunder … thank Thor our politicians agree
As a person of faith it’s gratifying to know that my views are being taken seriously.
I believe in the Norse Gods. Everyone from our own dear First Minister, to the current UK Labour Government and the likely incoming Conservative administration firmly holds the view that a belief in the supernatural, and the indoctrination of supernatural beliefs in our children by state-funded schools, is a good thing. This is marvellous news. When we finally get our state-funded school, Odin’s will and the family values that he laid down for all mankind will finally be taught as fact. About time too.
For too long our children have suffered under the bigoted education system that teaches them lightning storms are a result of charged electrical particles in the atmosphere, when the faithful know it is our lord Thor beating his mighty anvil with his Divine hammer. And our truths, we believe, are particularly important in sex education. Our school will teach no nonsense about homosexuality being natural and contraception being important because we know that the jotuun Ymir’s son, from whom Odin descended, bred a man and a woman from his armpits. So we will be insisting that armpit reproductive health will trump all other considerations. We will teach young boys and girls to cover their armpits modestly, and how to avoid unwanted pregnancies from the oxters. Happily, Ed Balls has made provision for this in law, so our children can grow up with these all-important values in place.
Thanks to Muriel Gray for this piece at the The Herald Scotland. There’s much more at the link.
If you suspect that Gray is merely having you on about all those preposterous beliefs, check out the subsequent paragraph:
I’ll stop now. You’ve got the point. People actually believed this stuff. Just as people still believe in similar stuff, such as virgin births, Satan, djinns, saints who cure hiccups, gods who like swings chained up on Sundays, gods who don’t like us to mix meat with cheese, angels who won’t enter a house if it contains a dog. They believe a man received the word of God on some golden plates and then handed them back, and that a man received the word of God on a stone tablet and then smashed it. Another man, much more conveniently, had the word of God dictated directly to him in his tent. They believe if you transfuse your blood you lose your soul, that we are all aliens called Thetans, that God thinks women are not equal to men and that gay people should be killed. They think that God considers a collection of dividing cells in a woman’s womb always more important than the woman herself, and that if you go to where prepubescent girls claim to have seen The Virgin Mary appear and light some candles then your terminal cancer might be cured or your brain-damaged child made to talk.
Via UK Gay News, we’re linked to an excellent article in the Irish lesbian e-zine Gaelick, on the protest at a prey-away-the-gay conference in Northern Ireland that was organized by the London-based journalist and founder of Stop Conversion Therapy Taskforce (SCOTT), Patrick Strudwick.
The newly formed Stop Conversion Therapy Taskforce (SCOTT) protested an ex-gay conference held in Ballynahinch, County Down.
The group was founded by gay investigative journalist Patrick Strudwick who sought to discover the methods used by those therapists who claim they can cure the gay, by presenting himself as seeking to be rid of his homosexuality. In his year-long investigation, he signed up with two therapists, including one man who turned out to be the psychiatrist Iris Robinson famously promoted at the peak of her anti-gay crusade.
According to Strudwick, the message of the protest was simple: “Love needs no cure.”
A number of loony-tunes approaches to converting the gays into the straights are cited in the article. Jacq excerpts a telling exchange from Strudwick’s undercover exposé of conversion therapy in The Independent. Strudwick, posing as a gay man seeking to change his sexual orientation, met with a predatory psychologist affiliated will the International Healing Foundation — a group represented by ex-gay counselorCaleb Brundidge at the anti-gay stadium rally staged in Kampala that fanned the flames of homophobia and is credited with playing a part in the introduction of Uganda’s infamous exterminate-the-gays bill.
Dr Paul Miller, in the course of a therapy session, said to Strudwick:
“Close your eyes and focus on that arousal you’re feeling down in your genitals,” he says. “I want you to hear, as a man, as I look at your body, I see strong shoulders and a strong chest, I see a man who has an attractive body and I want you just to notice the arousal you feel as you hear me talking about that.”
The professionally discredited, as in “permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association,” founder of the International Healing Foundation, Richard Cohen is an advocate of “Touch” therapy, in which the male counselor joins the male client stretched out on the couch, as Cohen demonstrated on CNN:
Ex-gay quack Richard Cohen on CNN’s Paula Zahn Now (video: CNN via YouTube)
The ex-gay conference in Northern Ireland featured a Chicago-based, christianist charlatan by the name of Mario Bergner, who claims to have cured himself of both the gay and AIDS simply by praying both away. “The invisible dude in the sky cured me of AIDS” is common lie among the ex-gay phonies. In this case Bergner was never diagnosed with AIDS, he only imagined the symptoms, so, if his personal sky fairy cured anything, it was hypochondria.
Here’s Bergner’s own account of his miraculous cure:
At twenty-three I was hospitalized with eleven symptoms of AIDS. From my bed, I questioned the Lord about homosexuality and Christianity. Jesus appeared saying, ”I want to heal your whole person, not just your sexuality. Choose.” Not understanding what “choose” meant I just chose him. I recovered and years later tested HIV negative.
As for Bergner’s female counterpart at the prey-away-the-gay-let’s-take-this-dog-and-pony-on-the-road-and-make-a-few-bucks-while-we’re-at-it conference, ex-lez Christine Sneeringer:
The other speaker was Christine Sneeringer who claims her lesbianism stems from childhood sexual abuse and a breakdown in her relationship with her mother. She was ultimately saved from lesbianism by a Christian softball league (really).
Thank you Ms Sneeringer for saving me the trouble of writing a punchline.
