The Gaytheist Agenda

Give them a “holy book”, they’ll give you porn in return. The premise is you’re exchanging Smut for Smut. Needless to say that has a good number of believers in a tizzy.

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A sign in the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) Humanities building reading, “Free porn: Just trade in your holy books (Bible, Koran, Vedas) for porn” has led several students to take offense, as was revealed when local television station KENS spoke with some of the students on campus.
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A third UTSA scholar was shocked upon hearing the news, asking, “Did they really do that,” and adding, “It kind of made we want to cry.” One other student simply stated, “Basically, I disagree. You know, I think that the university setting is basically for learning, and that type of stuff needs to be kept out of it.”
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But you are learning, Blanche, you are. You’re learning that some people find your Bible just as depraved as any of the magazines normally reserved for the top rack of the newsstand. It contains, and often condones, things like infanticide, genocide, rape, murder, slavery, incest, and more. It’s not the opus of purity and morality believers claim it to be. (Other “holy books”, like the Koran and Book of Mormon, are just as bad.)

Thomas Jackson, former president for the campus group The Atheist Agenda, believes the “Smut for Smut” program is a matter of fair trade, since Christians have been the most vocal opponents of pornography and because “religious texts are so appalling.”

Many area residents are contacting school officials to express their disapproval.

I find it amusing that the religious people are so agitated over this event. They hand out their “holy books” and other religious materials every day–even to children outside public schools–without a moment’s thought to the fact that others might be offended by them. They don’t consider the fact that what they see as sacred, moral and holy can be perceived by others as offensive, oppressive and even vulgar. Perhaps every campus and public square should have a Smut for Smut event so their eyes will be opened.

 

Two Texas men have been arrested in connection with a string of church burnings. Of course if they’re guilty I hope they suffer the consequences of their actions. But it’s what we’re not seeing in most of the stories, and what we’re seeing pushed in the headlines, that raises my eyebrows.

 

Report: Church Fire Suspect Had Books on Atheism

 
These headlines imply an angry, religion-hating atheist who went on a church burning rampage. So what’s wrong with the headlines and the stories they link to? For one thing, most of them only mention the book on atheism, and neglect the book about demon possession. That may seem insignificant but the fact is that people who are atheists (with rare exceptions) do not believe in demons (evil supernatural beings) and certainly not in the concept of “demon possession”. Atheism (lack of belief in gods) and belief in demons/demon possession are two very disparate things.

Am I saying Bourque is definitely not an atheist? Of course not. I’m just noting that one atheist book does not an atheist make, despite the media spin. (Incidentally on Bourque’s MySpace page he indicates he is a Christian.)

What is more disingenuous about the reporting is the fact that most of the news headlines or stories fail to mention the three Bibles found in Jason Bourque’s home. Honest mistake? Perhaps, but I’m inclined to believe otherwise. Most likely it just didn’t fit with the picture of the suspects as renegade atheists on a rampage to persecute religious people so it was conveniently omitted from most of the stories.

Atheists face enough stigma in society already. We don’t need slanted, dishonest reporting like this to engender more of the same.

 

Someone decides to abstain from something because it’s not in line with their religious beliefs. That’s commonplace. But in this case it’s a Wiccan teenager sitting out Christmas songs.

Fifteen-year-old Katarina Keen won’t sing along to “Silent Night” or “Listen to the Stars,” two Christian songs planned for her choir’s upcoming Christmas concert at Borger High School. But she will sing “Jingle Bells” and “A Carol in Winter.”

Katarina and her family are Wiccan.
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While their Christian peers in Borger celebrate Christmas, the Keens are preparing for one of eight Wiccan holidays, the Yule, in celebration of the winter solstice Dec. 21.

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“Choral music has its roots in the church. In order to teach it accurately, you have to teach it from whence it came,” Miller said. “I teach the foundation or the building blocks so these students can go out with a well-rounded foundation in choral music.”
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Teaching the children about religious/church music and having them perform it are two completely different things. But considering what I discovered about Miller via Mojoey I’m not surprised he can’t tell the difference.

Of course the comments below the story are very telling. Where are the usual defenders of Religious Freedom? Oh, that’s right. Religious Freedom in this nation applies only to Christians.

 

How dare anybody promote the idea of a loving, tolerant Jesus? Everybody knows there’s only one interpretation of the Bible, and it says Jesus hates fags.

NORTH TEXAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
Christine Lutz was traveling down Interstate-30, just east of Fort Worth, when she came face to face with a billboard containing a pro-gay message. “I cringed. I was disgusted at the same time,” she said.

The billboard angered Lutz so much, that she fired off a stern e-mail. “I said how dare you take the scriptures and twist it to fit your needs,” she recalled.

Indeed. Christine Lutz’ interpretation of the scriptures is The One and True interpretation. How dare anybody else have a different one? It’s always those pesky gays taking the scriptures and twisting it to fit their needs. For shame!

The billboards were put up a week ago along I-30 between Grand Prairie and Fort Worth and the negative e-mails are already coming in. “There are people who have told us to reread our Bible which is the very question we’re asking others to do,” explained Rev. Colleen Darruagh, with Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Dallas. “We’ve had people say, ‘How dare you take the name of God in vain’ and that God hates homosexuals.”
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God hates shrimp and pork, too, but that doesn’t stop his most faithful from chowing down with their second (or third) spouses at Seafood Shack or Buck’s Rib House after church on Sunday afternoons, does it? These devout Christians will ignore whole swathes of scriptures that are inconvenient for them, but make the lives of others a living hell over the ones they selectively choose to enforce.

The roadside signs will be up in North Texas throughout September. For a closer look at the billboards check out the website Why Would We and Would Jesus Discriminate

Here’s a collection of videos from yesterday’s Nationwide Kiss-in. Enjoy!

San Francisco

Denver (Lots of families in this one)

Santa Monica Part 1

Santa Monica Part 2

Santa Monica Part 3

Chicago

Salt Lake City


 

When the Alabama Freethought Association approached Lamar Advertising about putting up their billboard they were refused. The reason? “It was offensive to me,” said Tom Traylor, general manager of Lamar Advertising in Birmingham. Atheist groups have encountered similar resistance all over the nation when attempting to have their ads put on billboards or buses. If they manage to convince the ad agencies to run them, they must endure considerable public backlash.

Lamar Advertising sold a billboard to escort service MyPlayBunny.com in Rio Grande Valley, Texas, after refusing to take the money of an atheist group in Alabama.

The Texas Play Bunny board says “I’ll be your play bunny” and advertises a phone number. Although the number and web site appear to be extinct — possibly as a result of this TV News report — a Google cache of the site indicates that Play Bunny was a “premiere” escort service. (Is there any other kind?)
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But Lamar apparently has no problem with “escorts” pushing their wares on the billboards they rent out. That’s not deemed to “offensive” to the sensibilities of Christians and other delicate types.

The Texas branch of Lamar, and the community it serves, displayed a refreshingly admirably liberal attitude toward call-girl advertising. KGBT Action 4 News:

Louise Betancourt said Lamar has very strict guidelines for anyone who wants to advertise with them.

“We allow anyone to advertise with use as long as the copy on the billboard is in good taste,” said Betancourt. “We don’t permit these kinds of billboards near churches or school.”

He said, in the past, they did not allow these kinds of billboards but now they do.

As for the billboard Betancourt said, “The billboard in question is not advertised as an escort service.”

“Not advertised as an escort service”. Nice dodge there. Ms. “Play Bunny” is obviously offering help find your children’s Easter Eggs for them. Anyway, Google confirms they are indeed an escort service.

 
But then what do I know? Maybe Lamar was, in rejecting the atheist ads and accepting the escort service ads, catering to the specialized needs and tastes of the local communities. During our cross country trip my wife and I saw more ginormous “Adult” book and toy stores in the “Bible Belt” states than we’ve ever seen here in California. Ironically many of them were across from or within a few miles of equally behemoth religious monuments or churches. So I really shouldn’t be so surprised that hooker escort billboards are fine while atheist billboards are verboten.

 

When I read stories like these I have to look at a calendar to remind myself this is 2009 rather than, say, 1959.

Gay couple cited after incident on Temple Square

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Matt Aune and Derek Jones claim they were assaulted by security guards outside the Salt Lake City Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Their disgust with us was clear,” says Aune.

“We were actually side-by-side and Matt stepped in, gave me a hug and kissed me on the face,” says Jones. Both men say it happened Thursday night when they were walking downtown and cut through church property near Main Street. They say they were assaulted when LDS Church security told them to leave, but they refused and asked why.

“The next thing we know, I’m being forced onto the ground on my stomach, my face is on the pavement, they handcuffed me and they grab Matt and try to get him into handcuffs,” says Jones. “This is from handcuffs? Uh huh, yes,” says Aune. “And some marks here on this arm as well. But they weren’t the police so they had no business restraining us.”

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Both men say they’re aware the Church owns the property that was once public. But since 2003, the Church has the authority to ask anyone to leave for any reason.

“We weren’t doing anything lewd, just anything any other couple would do, which I have seen on that easement before,” says Jones.

An ABC 4 camera captured other couples holding hands and even one sharing a brief kiss near the property that Aune and Jones say they’re now banned from for six months. “It was ridiculous, we were walking home. We weren’t hanging out, not loitering. We weren’t even admiring the sites, we were just going home,” says Jones.
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A religious group selectively enforcing rules to target others? Unheard of! Yet of course they’ll be playing the victim in the wake of any resultant outcry.

 
Two gay men kicked out of Chico’s Tacos restaurant for kissing

EL PASO — Two gay men kissed at a Chico’s Tacos restaurant, prompting guards to eject them and a police officer to endorse their ouster.

Civil-rights lawyers say the security staff was out of line. Police, though, contend that a business such as a restaurant can refuse service to anybody, any time.

In all, five men were ordered to leave the restaurant. They say they were forced out by homophobic guards.

“It was a simple kiss on the lips,” said Carlos Diaz de Leon, a gay man who was part of the group.
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The five men, all gay, were placing their order at the Chico’s Tacos restaurant on Montwood when the men kissed. All five sat down, but the two guards at the restaurant told them to leave.

De Leon quoted one of the guards as saying he didn’t allow “that faggot stuff” in the restaurant.

De Leon said they refused to leave and called police for help. He said an officer arrived about an hour later in response to calls from his group and the guards.

As they waited for police, the guards directed other anti-gay slurs at them, he said.
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De Leon said the officer told the group it was illegal for two men or two women to kiss in public. The five men, he said, were told they could be cited for homosexual conduct — a law the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas.
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“The security guard received a complaint from some of the customers there,” Carrillo said. “Every business has the right to refuse service. They have the right to refuse service to whoever they don’t want there. That’s their prerogative.”

Briana Stone, a lawyer with the Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project, disagreed.

She said the city anti-discrimination ordinance protects people on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in public places. Perhaps more troubling, she said, was that the police officer chose not to enforce that ordinance and might have contributed to discrimination.
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De Leon said he and his friends left the restaurant after an officer threatened to issue a citation for “homosexual conduct.”

 
Chico’s Tacos is a private business. However it is also considered a public accommodation. They can’t refuse service to people arbitrarily or based on personal bigotries.

Ironically should gay people choose to not spend their money at such a business (and some have indeed called for a boycott of Chico’s) there would undoubtedly be cries from the RRRW that they were being “targeted”. For some reason we’re always supposed to support them regardless of how they treat us. The stench of hypocrisy is strong with them.

 

According to reports Aaron Hart has an IQ of 47 which would indicate a diagnosis of moderate mental retardation/Intellectual disability. Having worked with adults who had developmental disabilities for 20 years I know very well someone with his level of disability, particularly someone who hadn’t had sufficient education and training, could not be held legally responsible for a criminal act–particularly a felony. Sadly Aaron Hart not only has been convicted of one but has been sentenced to 100 years.

When an 18-year-old with profound mental disabilities performed sexual acts on a 6-year-old neighbor, the small town of Paris, Texas, was unforgiving.

But Aaron Hart’s punishment - 100 years in prison for a single incident - has stunned veteran disability rights advocates, who believed counseling, probation or even placement in a group home would have sufficed for a first-time offender with the mental maturity of a second-grader.

“Aaron is 18, never committed a felony, had no violent record. He couldn’t understand the seriousness of what he did,” said his father, Robert Hart. “I never dreamed they would think about sending him to prison. When they said 100 years - it was terror, pure terror to me.”

The sentence raises serious questions about how people with profound disabilities are prosecuted in Texas, at a time when both state lawmakers and the U.S. Supreme Court are considering the appropriate punishment for people who are young, mentally disabled or both. Repeat child molesters and rapists routinely receive lesser sentences than Hart’s.
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Pearson blames Hart’s trial attorney, who had the burden of explaining Hart’s disability to the judge and jury. That attorney, appointed by the court because Hart’s family couldn’t afford counsel, did not ask for special accommodations, such as a liaison who could help the defendant understand what was happening in court. Nor did he try to call witnesses who could testify to Hart’s mental condition, Pearson said.
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Faced with a five-count guilty plea signed in wobbly block letters, a jury sentenced Hart to three 30-year prison terms and two five-year terms - one for each class of offense. Lamar County Judge Eric Clifford, who made the decision to stack the sentences into one 100-year prison term, said neither he nor the jury loved the idea of prison for Hart, but they felt they had no other option.
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Guilty plea signed by the defendant? The defendant can’t read or write, and he has the mental capacity of a second-grader. What the heck is wrong with that judge that he considers that signature valid?

Jurors tell a different story. They say that during their deliberations, they repeatedly sent notes to the judge asking if there were alternatives to prison, which they said the judge didn’t answer clearly. They said they were sure Hart would serve a concurrent sentence and were flabbergasted when Clifford stacked the sentences.
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Pearson, the appellate attorney, and disability rights groups say the trial was riddled with errors from start to finish.
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Pearson said the court-appointed doctor who evaluated Hart did the bare minimum to determine competency; he didn’t talk to any of Hart’s teachers, and ran tests geared toward mental illness, not mental retardation.
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Pearson said Massar was ruled an ineffective counsel in a 2007 case the 6th Court of Appeals in Texarkana overturned. That court is expected to hear Hart’s appeal later this year.
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Hart’s father, Robert, said that while his son may look like a man, mentally, he’s as young as his victim. He said the one silver lining in this case is that his son doesn’t understand how dire his situation is.
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This case is a travesty of justice and I hope his appeal goes well. Hart doesn’t belong in prison. Possibly he would benefit from a structured, supervised living arrangement and instruction in, among other things, human sexuality. Had he had such instruction previously it may have prevented this entire mess but at the very least further incidents can be prevented without resorting to barbaric tactics like 100-year prison sentences for someone who can’t possibly grasp why he’s there or learn anything from it.

 

Irving’s Thomas Haley Elementary School (TX) requires students tuck their shirts in as part of its dress code. Dyker Neyland claimed her daughter Javé should be exempt from the rule as her “religious beliefs” dictated modesty and cited the following Bible verse as support:

1 Timothy 2:9
I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes,

What leaving a shirt untucked has to do with “modesty” I don’t know. Ms. Neyland claims it has to do with her “behind” showing but unless the child goes to school sans pants her behind won’t be showing if she tucks her shirt in. She, of course, played the “I’m being persecuted for my beliefs” card the moment she was met with the slightest resistance. How predictable. Mind you, she doesn’t go to church (Supposedly can’t afford a “nice dress”. Funny, I thought church was supposed to be about worshiping God, not putting on a fashion show). What else is there, you ask? Take a look at this picture and tell me, in reference to the above Bible verse, what you find wrong with it.

Did you notice the braids both mom and daughter were wearing? I did. Now go back and read the verse again. Why is it Neyland objects to a tucked in shirt under the guise that it’s not modest while she finds braids just fine? Could it be she’s being utterly dishonest about why she wants her daughter to not have to follow a rule everybody else in school does? I’ll leave you to form your own conclusions as to why she, or the child, really have issues with shirts being tucked in.

The district’s attorney, James Deatherage, said that in Texas, parents may get exemptions to uniform rules if they cite religious beliefs.

And here we have the crux of the problem, not only in this school system but society at large. You don’t want to follow the rules or the law? Just cite your “religious beliefs”. You don’t have to prove anything. All you have to do is make the claim and you’re exempt. The thing is with all the holy books out there you can easily find some verse, and interpret it how you want to, to exempt yourself from anything.

I can’t help but wonder how long it will take the Powers that Be to catch on to these charlatans and end this insanity.

 

Things like this make me sick beyond words.

HENDERSON — A couple who told authorities they were trying to rid a toddler of demonic possession when she died, have been indicted for her murder — a murder that included the child being beaten with a hammer, slammed into stationary objects and finally strangled.

A Rusk County grand jury handed up the capital murder indictments this week against registered sex offender Blaine Keith Milam, 19, and Jessica Bain Carson, 18, the Dec. 2, death of the woman’s 13-month-old daughter Amora Bain Carson.

Carson and Milam called 911 from a home at 13717 County Road 2125 shortly after 10:35 the morning of Dec. 2, and said the child was not breathing.

An arrest affidavit states Milam performed an exorcism of the demons purportedly possessing their child.

The affidavit continues to state after Milam killed the child with Carson looking on, the couple “drove to Henderson to pawn some items to pay for an exorcism.”

Officials said Milam and Carson told detectives they decided to hire a priest after the exorcism went badly.

However, there has been no information of any clergy being called to the home found in the case.

Detectives said at the time Carson and Milam beat the child multiple times with a hammer then bit the child more than 30 times.

The indictments against the couple state the defendants also caused the child’s death by striking her against objects and by strangulation.

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While I’d never advocate or even hope for violence or harm to befall anybody, I can’t say it would break my heart if those parents got “exorcised” by other prisoners in jail.