Milo Yiannopoulos meets the Church Militant, and a love-in follows

It’s the damnedest thing. Yiannopoulos gets invited on to Michael Voris’s reactionary Catholic show, and he accepted. I guess that tells you how desperate for attention he has become.

I tangled with Voris a few times 8 or 9 years ago — he had a YouTube channel called The Vortex (it’s now been shuffled around to the “ChurchMilitant Archives”) in which he railed against atheists, Catholics who weren’t Catholic enough, and gays, and demanded that America become a Catholic monarchy…so kind of a squirrely Bill Donohue on meth. The pairing of Voris and Yiannopoulos was unexpected, but they really hit it off and had a little lovefest online. It’s a bit like those old commercials for Reese’s — “You got peanut butter on my chocolate! No, you got chocolate on my peanut butter! Yum, it’s delicious” — only substitute shit and snot for peanut butter and chocolate, and no, I’m not going to try it to see if the combination suddenly acquires a delightful flavor.

Here, you can suffer as I did.

It begins with Yiannopoulos whining about his ‘tragic’ fall from grace. His explanation is that he got too big and too powerful, so a leftist conspiracy was mobilized to tear him down with lies.

But who cares about Milo Yiannopoulos, anyway? The bulk of the conversation — if we can call it that, Voris only gets an occasional word in edgewise — is Milo rambling on and on about how he despises Pope Francis, but reveres the institution of the papacy, which is where he and Voris are clearly copacetic. Both think the the church is full of deviants and perverts, and that the way to fix the Catholic church is to clear out all the gay priests, although, Milo is quick to add, Leftists make way too much noise about priestly rapists, it wasn’t that bad, he got over it, the real problem is social justice warriors getting all up in arms about it. Blah blah blah. Talking fast to bury all the lies and inconsistencies.

He also comes down strongly on the nature vs nurture debate (I say there is no debate, it’s both, and you can’t untangle all the influences.) Milo strangely argues that it’s all nurture, that you can shape a child any ol’ way you want, making him the only blank-slater I’ve ever heard from.

There’s also a prolonged eruption of misogyny. Did you know that lesbians ruined everything, that they’re all bitter divorcees and spinsters, and that If you take god away from a woman and she’s 35 and doesn’t have a man by her side, bad things happen, and that he’s certain that Generation Z will change everything back. He wants to see women burning their briefcases and marching in defense of motherhood, which roused Voris to interject that that is authentic feminism, as represented by the Blessed Mother.

The last bit of the video is the two of them going back and forth, piously declaring that they’ll pray for each other, and Milo suggesting that he might come back to the way of purity and light and Catholicism, but he needs 5 or 10 years more to have fun indulging in his degeneracy. Voris is cool with that.

Only watch on an empty stomach. Anthony Barcellos, you are a wicked man for sending me that — I’m pretty sure it was a mortal sin.

And the award for Slimiest Cult goes to…Scientology!

I’d forgotten who Danny Masterson was, so I had to look him up. He played Steven on That 70’s Show, a character I disliked, and he went on to play in some movies I’ve never seen and a Netflix Original that I never watched. So kind of a C-level semi-celebrity.

But now I’ve learned that he’s accused of being a rather nasty rapist, one that the LA police department has been dragging its heels over bringing to justice. Oh. And one other thing: he’s a Scientologist, and Leah Remini is going to expose him next month (warning: that link contains explicit descriptions of multiple cases of rape), possibly to shame the LAPD into getting off their collective butts. It seems the police are afraid of the Church of Scientology.

Leah’s second season began airing in August 2017, but in November 2017 we revealed that the DA’s office had asked her not to broadcast the Masterson episode while they were still considering whether to charge the actor. Now, more than a year since then, A&E has decided that DA Jackie Lacey has had enough time to make up her mind about charges, and will air the episode.

And what is taking Lacey so long to decide? One of Masterson’s accusers tells us that a member of the DA’s office admitted to her several months ago that Scientology’s involvement in the matter was the reason for the delay. “When I asked him what was taking so long, he said, ‘Scientology. Without going into it, that’s the only way to summarize it.’”

Scientology, for example, discouraged at least two of the women from reporting their allegations to the police. It put one of them through bizarre therapy costing about $15,000 so she could discover what nefarious acts she had committed in past lives to deserve being victimized in this one. And it coordinated an effort to sabotage the case of the one woman who did report her rape to the police initially, in 2004, a case that the LAPD mysteriously later misplaced.

Yuck. That’s a cult with no redeeming qualities at all.

How about if we never elect death-cultists, or people who appoint death-cultists, to office ever again

Mike Pompeo promising never-ending struggle until the Rapture:

We are plagued with an ominous number of these evangelical fanatics who are focused on the “End Times”, believe in prophecy, and bend all their effort to making prophecies of doom and death come true. Could we please stop putting them in office where their effectiveness in killing the world is amplified?

Jeremy Morris is one reason we have a War on Christmas

This story is infuriating. Jeremy Morris is a Christian fanatic and zealous Republican — he named his dog Ronald Reagan — who claims to love Christmas. When you read the story, though, it’s clear that he’s far more interested in bullying and antagonizing his neighbors with an overwrought Christmas display, and throwing his weight around, than he is in actually practicing Christian charity. He is “owning the libs” personified. So he puts on an extravagant Christmas display involving hundreds of thousands of lights, paid actors, and a camel, and basically dares his neighbors to complain. And when they do, he declares that they must be anti-Christian.

Be prepared. There are no good guys in this story. He gets into a legal battle with his Home Owners Association, and HOAs are intrinsically evil — they accuse him of attracting riff-raff from a nearby Walmart to their pristine real estate. The Three Percenters offered to help Morris out. Everyone is claiming the precious sanctity of their religion, and when he goes to court, he wins, with a jury of North Idahoan Christians all agreeing that forcing a rich lawyer to tone down his kitschy display of blaring Christmas carols and blinking lights and prancing Santa Clauses is discriminating against Christianity.

Lovely country out there in North Idaho. It’s too bad it’s full of assholes.

Charleston sees the light…or the oncoming legal sledgehammer

I mentioned that it was odd that the Charleston, Illinois Parks & Rec department was sponsoring all these evangelical Christian events, including a trip to the Ark Park. Well, they aren’t anymore: The FFRF slammed them for unconstitutional religious advocacy, and they canceled.

When it comes to the secular U.S. government, the City of Charleston has acted in an unconstitutional manner to endorse any religious mission facilitated by such attractions. The government cannot organize, fund, or sponsor any trip to either the Creation Museum or to Ark Encounter. Ryan Jayne, the FFRF staff attorney, sent a letter to Rachael Cunningham, the City Attorney, stating the government is actively doing an unconstitutional action by advertising and organizing any trip to religious attractions like a Christian museum and a Christian theme park. Funding such activities also go against the United States government ethos. The letter continued saying although it is a laudatory aim to encourage citizens to attend a recreational event, pushing a religious attraction alienates those who are not Christians and belong to any other faith or to no faith. “Surely there are appropriate secular activities, in addition to the planned trip to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, that would not attempt to convert attendees to a particular religion.”

I imagine some people in Charleston are seething right now. Good.

Something is supposed to happen today?

I haven’t been paying any attention at all to QAnon. Apparently Something Big was predicted for today, 5 December, and Colin McRoberts Jennifer Raff is confident it won’t happen, because Q is a fraud.

This time, if you weren’t already aware, Q and his most dedicated followers have been predicting Big Things for December 5. Exactly what Big Things depends on what and how much you read between the lines of his choppy little nuggets; Q mostly stopped making specific predictions after a series of embarrassing failures. He learned the lesson of horoscope writers and started making vague, open-ended predictions, so that no matter what happens he can always go back and claim to have predicted it. But people wouldn’t pay attention to Q if he didn’t promise apocalyptic drama, so whatever you think he’s predicting, it’s supposed to be a big deal.

Ah, but what does he know? The Q insiders are well aware that the prediction is actually about the size of the President’s bowel movement, and everyone will be dazzled with the insight when he tweets, “Made a big poopy. The biggest!” later today.

Read the rest of his post for the well-known information about the mechanics of conspiracy theories and prophecies, and how to recover from the delusions. Also, that is the most awesome photoshopped illustration of how right-wing conspiracy mongers think of themselves and their enemies.

What kind of weird hell is Charleston, Illinois?

Anyone live there? Or near there? I was just pointed at their Parks & Recreation department, which has been busy promoting a very Christian life, despite being listed as a “government organization”. Like this:

I guess it is the Charleston Parks & Rec department’s job to take people out of Charleston and drive them all the way across Indiana to a Christian religious indoctrination camp. It just seems way out of bounds for a city government.

Then I noticed other events that they’ve sponsored.

Really? Daddy-daughter dances and Mom-son dates? Could all of you creepy Christians learn that there are healthy parent-child relationships, and they don’t try to mimic courtship rituals?

Charleston has a large regional university, Eastern Illinois, but even that doesn’t offset my impression of the town as a bizarre little theocracy full of glassy-eyed Christian zealots who wouldn’t think of complaining about how the city government has been hijacked by fundies. Maybe there are some residents of the region who can correct me, unless the kinds of people who would read freethoughtblogs have all been incinerated in a wicker man over the years.

God’s convenient rules of real estate

Someone explain this Robert Jeffress quote to me. I can’t quite wrap my head around it.

‘While Christian compassion is one consideration, it’s not the only consideration in the immigration problem,’ he said.’I mean, the Bible also says that God is the one who established nations and its borders. God is not necessarily an open borders guy, as a lot of people would think that he is.

Borders change. Is every change god-ordained? Does God have a map in his head that says whether Alsace-Lorraine should be within the French or German borders?

Which borders are the official ones? Should we go back to the True Borders at the time of Jesus?

I’m also a bit concerned about what happened in the 16th century. There were a lot of nations in North America that were, I assume, established by God, and a whole lot of Europeans came in and fucked them up.

That was a major immigration problem. What did God have to say about that? We seem to have broken a lot of nations and borders, and God did diddly-squat in response.

I also have to say that that I seem to have read more of the Bible than an ordained minister. God never seemed to have cared much about respecting borders — his Chosen People were a huge wandering caravan of ex-slaves who wandered for 40 years, and finally found their land of milk and honey and just up and conquered it, slaughtering the people who already lived there.

(Maybe Jeffress is acknowledging that there is no historical evidence for any of this, and that the tribes of Canaan just made it all up.)

I am beginning to suspect that Jeffress is simply full of expedient bullshit to justify whatever the hell he wants.

These are the scariest Halloween costumes ever

Zombies, ghouls, and miscellaneous brain-dead monsters:

It’s for a homeschooling conference titled Teach Them Diligently, with the motto “Strengthen Your Family Through Biblical Homeschooling”. Would you pay money to have these jokers teach your children lies?

Hmmm. I’ve got a strong family with children who grew up to make me proud, and we never had to indoctrinate them in biblical foolishness to accomplish that. What does their audience have to be so insecure about? That maybe, unless they lie really loudly, their children will grow up to ask questions and abandon dogma? Most of us consider that to be a desirable outcome.

What would Jesus say, Pat?

Pat Robertson has some opinions on the idea of butchering a journalist while he’s alive with a bone saw. They’re not what I would have thought a Christian would openly admit.

He argues that we should basically overlook a little thing like a torture-murder because Saudi Arabia are key allies, our main enemy in the Middle East is Iran, and there’s also that little $190 billion arms deal which means a lot of jobs and a lot of money coming into our coffers. You know, 2000 years ago the most powerful empire of the time also endorsed a torture-murder of someone in the interests of maintaining the balance of power in the Middle East and pacifying a troublesome population; I guess that would have been OK if Jesus had also been interfering with a profitable trade in spears and swords.

I like ol’ Pat. He keeps opening his mouth and contributing to the corruption of religious faith. He’s probably done far more for atheism than Richard Dawkins. Televangelists in general have been awesome forces for discrediting organized religion for years.