Catholics burning Protestants, a fine old Christian tradition.

Christians just love the idea of persecution. Generally speaking, throughout all of Xian history, the persecution was applied by them, towards pretty much everyone, including those Xians who decided to do things a bit differently. The history of Xianity is a particularly nasty one, and it’s not at all like they like to paint, with them the humble, willing martyrs so terribly persecuted. The initial church, the Catholic one, had a death grip on many world leaders, as well as too much of the population. The had terrible wealth and power, and used it. Ages went by with the constant spilling of blood, all the wars, the crusades, condemning countless children and adults to death. All the declarations of heresy. The inquisition. Oh, all those witches to torture, burn, and hang. A Christian’s work is never done. Once divisions took place, those who rejected Catholicism got busy torturing and killing those who wouldn’t renounce Catholicism (as in Hawaii), and so on. A history replete with brutal oppression, burning with fanatical hatred and writ in blood. The majority of Xians, anywhere in the world, know very little about actual history. They know the insipid stories they are fed, and little more. Learning on your own when you’re any flavour of xian is frowned upon, and quickly discouraged. Learning has this nasty habit of shedding light, and making a person curious and questioning. Not a good thing when it comes to religion. You are, to steal from Futurama, to choose to believe what you have been programmed to believe.

Christians to this day insist they are persecuted, oh yes we are, they cry, while stamping their feet. This never ending cry is often deafening here in uStates. Recently, the ever delusional Louie Gohmert and Frank Gaffney went on and on about it.

Back in early 2009, at the start of President Obama’s time in office, the Department of Homeland Security released a report about violent right-wing extremism. This would have been a relatively minor event had the Religious Right not immediately seized upon a single footnote in the report to claim that the whole thing was an Obama administration attack on Christians, veterans, anti-abortion activists, gun owners and conservatives in general.

In reality, the report dealt with the very real threat of violent right-wing extremism—the sort espoused by people like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh—and had nothing to do with the Religious Right as a whole or people who simply have conservative beliefs and political views. Nonetheless, Religious Right groups smelled an opportunity to raise money off a made-up threat of being persecuted by the new administration and immediatelysettoworkpaintingthe report as an attack on all conservatives, in particular Christians. Liberty Counsel even printed out “proud to be a right-wing extremist” cards for its members to carry, seemingly untroubled by willingly conflating itself with terrorists like McVeigh.

Quickly, House Republicans got involved and the department withdrew the report—much to the dismay of the Republican DHS staffer who wrote the report, who worried that all the outcry would hurt his small unit’s ability to fight actual violent right-wing extremism. When, just weeks after the report was pulled, an anti-choice extremist shot and killed abortion provider George Tiller, there was little to no backtracking among the activists who had claimed that a single mention in the report of anti-abortion-driven extremism was somehow an attack on all people who oppose abortion rights.

We bring this all up because nearly eight years later, conservative activists and their Republican allies are still using this report to claim that President Obama hasn’t been willing to fight Islamic radicalism and that he thinks that conservative Christians are the real terrorists.

The duplicity of Xians is of no surprise; most people have become long accustomed to it. Xians lie so damn much, it’s really only shocking when you first learn about the very long history of dishonest, hypocritical chicanery. The story is full of links, and there’s a lot to it, and I recommend reading it. I just want to address a small bit of the screed:

“And, actually, there are those who believe in this administration that Christians are the biggest hate group threat,” he said, “because, as they say, Christianity and religious freedom are code words for Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia and all these others, when, if they really understood Christianity, they would understand that if you’re truly a Christian you have no fear except for God, that’s the beginning of wisdom. “

Y’know, I hear that often, that Xians have no fear, except for being scared shitless of El Shaddai, but it simply is not true. If your belief was so burning, so solid, and you were absolutely convinced of the greatness of your god, why the brutal history of oppression? Why the constant attempts at brutal oppression now? Xians hate and fear great swathes of humanity. Naturally, they keep up the competition hate for other branches of the Abrahamaic religions (Judaism, Islam – same god, same basic beliefs). That’s no surprise. However, they twist themselves in insanity knots over the need to hate all those they brand “other”. Scott Lively couldn’t get his dream of executing people for the crime of being gay off the ground here, so he took it to Uganda, where he found success. Now that we’re entering into fascism, who knows what he’ll be able to do here. Xians hate and fear queer folk, and the reasons they manufacture are unbelievably weak. As has been mentioned here before, there are several love stories in the old testament (bible of your choice) which involve people of the same sex. My favourite is Jonathan and David. Yahweh didn’t go ballistic, why would it? I doubt any loving relationship ever garnered much attention. Rape was much more Yahweh’s thing. That, and slicing up concubines who had been tossed out to be gang raped all night. I guess paper was impractical. Oh, also demanding that raped virgins be executed. If there’s one thing you can learn from many stories in the OT, it’s that any new guy in town was expected to be gang savoured by all the men in town. That’s never explained, just why there were always herds of rampaging men who were after fresh male ass. They never ended up punished, these stories were always vehicles for the punishment of an unnamed woman. That brings us to another thing Xians hate and fear: women.

Oh, they don’t hate proper women, those who are prepared to be subservient and “womanly”. After all, a xian man needs an uterus, preferably a seldom speaking, non-thinking, non-questioning compliant one. Women who use their brains, are independent, and are unafraid to express themselves? Not so much. Above all, Xians just hate women having bodily autonomy. No, according to them, a woman must always belong to someone, a male someone. A woman should have zero say about what goes on, especially in the case of sex. Xians are absolutely rabid on the idea of abortion, and that’s a relatively new thing. Back when I terminated my pregnancy, in the 1970s (last century!), no one was fussing about it. They had not yet seized on it as a viable political platform. Any woman who has been on the planet for a good length of time knows that termination of pregnancies is not remotely new. It’s been done, well, pretty much always. Again, this is about power, privilege, and the overriding need to oppress. There’s the usual fault line of hypocrisy, too. Any person who has done time as a clinic escort can tell you about the fanatical anti-abortion Xians who have shown up at the clinic back door, hauling a young daughter with them. It’s not enough though, to just insist on punishing women by making pregnancy a situation of forced birth and punishment. They also want women to have no access to birth control, and they don’t want comprehensive sex education in schools, oh no. It doesn’t matter to them, either, whether or not all the people they insist inflicting this shit on are Xian. All that matters is their right to brutally oppress others. Such a loving religion, alright.

Xenophobic? Oh yes. Xians are constantly running about with their big ol’ stamp of oppression, marking all those people, and them too, oh, and especially those, “other“. Not us. They deeply fear globalism, because for those of us who see that as an opportunity to reach past borders and build bridges, to Xians, that’s a fucking nightmare. They require hatred, fear, and oppression. It makes them think their god has the biggest penis or something. That god, which is such a vaporous weakling that Xians just have to fight for it, oh my yes. That supposedly blazing faith which can’t stand up to a bunch of people being happy without their wispy dotard of a god. They don’t have faith, they don’t have belief. They have insecurity.

Islamaphobia? Oh, in spades. There’s nothing fanatical oppressors love quite as much as another faction of their faith to declare war on. Since the protestant/catholic thing has finally calmed down, for the most part anyway, this is the new divide. Fanatics on both sides of the faith splinter are exactly the same. They have so much in common, all they can do is hate one another. As far as the Xian fanatics in uStates, they just can’t stand the fact that anyone who does not believe in what they demand is allowed to exist at all, let alone live here.

“But these clowns,” he added, “are so ignorant of what true Christianity is, and that it’s the one religion that’s truly based on love, the idea that God so loved the world and sent His son and His son so loved the world that he gave his life,

Oh sure, spending your whole life working on the brutal oppression of others, that’s love. As for Yahweh and that whole “hey, I sacrificed a kid!” bullshit, you really need to sit in an empty room and fucking think about that scenario. It’s ugly as could be, and it was completely unnecessary. That said, if you’re so sold on that whole sacrifice business, how about you sacrifice your need to be fanatical assholes who live to stomp on the humanity of others? Right now, I’d settle for this: shut the fuck up, and stop legislating your hatred, fear, and bigotry.

Via Right Wing Watch.