Matthew Durham
I keep coming back to the banality of evil, and the stupidity of those who practice it within a religious context.
Meet Matthew Durham, a missionary from Oklahoma, who has been accused of molesting and raping children in an orphanage in Kenya while he was working there. According to court documents he has confessed verbally, in writing, and on video to his crimes.
So he’s a pedophile.
Matthew, however, claims that he is not REALLY a pedophile because it wasn’t him that did all the raping and molesting. It was a demon. Named Luke.
Probably not that Luke.
Luke the demon would periodically pop up and take over Matthew’s body, using it for rapey, molesty purposes before departing, leaving Matthew traumatized and with shaken faith. Matthew prayed, and prayed and prayed about the whole “possessed by rapey demon” thing, but was powerless against the Force powers of Luke.
Matthew’s attorney, however, has a different story. According to him, Matthew never actually did these things (not even in the proximate “I-was-possessed-by-a-rapey-demon” way he claimed). Instead, Matthew was the victim of dark, voodoo magic that made him THINK (and later confess) to all these horrible activities that he imagined himself as having done, but hadn’t ACTUALLY done. Poor Matthew was the true victim here.
So before I get into my rant, a quick question: if you knew that you were periodically possessed by a demon who used your body to rape and molest children, and you knew that you were incapable of stopping this demon from possessing you and raping and molesting children, wouldn’t you – as a decent human being – try to get AS FAR AWAY FROM CHILDREN AS POSSIBLE during those times when you weren’t possessed? It just seems like common courtesy to me.
Probably also not the correct Luke
What is it about using religious belief to excuse such vile behavior? Well, here’s the secret – it works. Once you have enough people out there who really, truly, honest-to-god BELIEVE, because their religion tells them to, that there are these evil, supernatural creatures out there that can possess people and make them do all sorts of bad stuff, then suddenly Matthew’s story, far from sounding like the desperate made-up bullshit excuse of a raving madman and pedophile, suddenly and magically SEEMS REASONABLE! Well of COURSE if there are demons out there, they are going to possess people – and there are and they do because it SAYS SO right there in the BIBLE! And if these demons are possessing people, then obviously the people they are possessing have diminished culpability, right? I mean sure Matthew can be held accountable for his lack of faith, which allowed the demon in. But the DEMON is responsible for actually raping and molesting those children.
Lack of faith – not a crime.
Raping and molesting children – crime.
Matthew’s attorney tried essentially the same argument, but using voodoo instead of Christian demons.
This is stupid stuff. This is nonsense. This is pure fantasy, made-up fairy tale magic and as long as we see religious people continuing to espouse, or accept, such nonsense that brand of religion can’t be seen as having any more legitimacy than primitive animism or reading chicken entrails.
So two bears for Matthew Durham for making up such a chicken-shit fable to try to deny responsibility for his actions, and two more for his attorney for running with it.
I haven’t written here in awhile, primarily because I was getting tired of the banality of evil. It always seems to be the same – people doing crazy stuff and not getting called on it because of their religion.
This week we have two.
First up Susanne Atanus, GOP candidate for the House in Chicago, believes that autism and dementia are God’s punishment for LGBT rights. Here’s my take on that – it isn’t. It’s stupid. I mean seriously it is a dumb idea, as anyone with a lick of sense would know. And yet it plays to the crowd again and again, despite the fact that the argument makes absolutely no theological, moral, intellectual, or even emotional sense. Really, people are actually willing to buy into the idea that they worship a deity who will inflict horrible suffering and misery on one group of people because a different group of people did something wrong? Even accepting for a moment the idea that LGBT rights are something abhorrent to God and that God is really, really pissed off about the whole LGBT question – is God really such a petulant, angry, pouty, ineffective brat that He would just go around randomly afflicting people with dementia and autism… apparently even in countries that don’t HAVE the same LGBT rights that we do – instead of bringing His wrath down on the actual perpetrators? And if you really, truly, believe that your God would do such things, why would you go to church every Sunday to worship the prick? Propitiate Him maybe, keep Him as far away from you and yours as possible, but actually sing songs praising him, talk about how much you love him, try to be more like Him? It makes the followers of Charles Manson seem positively sane by comparison.
And yet still people keep saying stuff like this and a certain audience keeps eating it up. For those of you who actually believe this stuff let me just say this – seriously. You need to develop a picture of your God that is more competent than this – a god who smites the people who He means to smite, the people who have brought down His wrath upon themselves by their actions, not some dopey galoot with sloppy aim and a penchant for random mass murder and torture. You are making your guy look bad. Stop it.
Next, there was Christian conservative and founder of Mission America, Linda Harvey. This week Ms. Harvey stated in an op-ed piece that everyone is actually heterosexual, and gay people only really pretend to be gay and keep quiet about their true, heterosexual nature.
This is another one of those arguments that I am tired of – the argument that homosexuality is or is not a choice. I have my own feelings on the matter, but ultimately my reaction is so just what? Whether homosexuality is a freely made lifestyle choice or something that is hardwired into the biology of homosexuals or something that combines the two and/or involves factors we haven’t even considered yet – is irrelevant. It does not matter. It is unimportant (except maybe to biologists, behaviorists, neurologists, the producers of Masters of Sex, and possibly David Bowie). To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, homosexual behavior neither breaks Ms. Harvey’s leg nor picks her pocket, so whether the behavior is biology or lifestyle choice doesn’t matter one tiny little bit. Ms. Harvey is free to think that homosexuality is a violation of the teachings of her religion, and she is free to voice the opinion that homosexuals are “icky”. But stuff like this is just spouting nonsense for the sake of hearing yourself talk and perhaps making it SOUND like you are saying something, and both Ms. Harvey and her followers should be able to deliver their message with appropriate justification rather than resorting to just making stuff up and going off on weird tangents like this one.
What connects these two women (other than the fact that I personally think that they should be eaten by bears)? The fact that both of them insist on pushing forward their case by resorting to flinging out justifications and arguments that are sheer nonsense in the hope that maybe somewhere, somehow, some of it will stick with their target audience. That they do this in lieu of simply telling the truth that they don’t like homosexuals and wish that homosexuals would be punished by society for practicing homosexuality. But neither of them has the courage of their convictions – neither of them believes that they can make a case based on stuff that is true like the fact that the Bible has injunctions against homosexuality. There is irony in the fact that they undercut the basis of their own beliefs, that they demonstrate that even they do not feel that those beliefs can stand up as justification for their positions, by making up untruths and irrelevancies to justify their own bigotry.
So, for each of you – two she-bears. May they tear your arguments to pieces.
You need to be eaten by bears, man.
Original image copyright Dreamstime.com
Remember Malala Yousafzai? She was the naughty, naughty girl who did things like read and go to school and stuff. Naughty things that the Taliban didn’t like. The Taliban tried to communicate this dissatisfaction with Malala’s behavior to her and instruct her on how to act differently through the expedient and efficient method of killing her dead, but obstinant person that she is, Malala refused the Taliban’s offered assistance in dying, going to hell, and burning for all eternity, and with the help of some very evil doctors, survivied. Recently, she even got to go before the UN on her 16th birthday and make a speech.
Well, Malala just got a letter from a very important person! She got mail from Adnan Rashid, a commander in the Taliban. Wow! Malala must be very important now – previously the Taliban had only sent her bullets.
You can read about this heartwarming story here.
I suppose I could go on about this – how this guy is crazy. About how even while saying how sorry he is, he won’t say that the Taliban did the wrong thing. But seriously. If you read the article linked above, you know what a sad and pathetic gesture this was. The whole letter struck exactly the wrong tone between faux sympathy and faux religion and faux regret. The only clear feeling that comes through in the letter is that Adnan Rashid wishes devoutly ant Malala’s brains had been spattered in all directions during the initial attack, and this whole thing had at worst been one more regrettable incident of foreigners doing inexplicably weird things to one another, instead of putting a cute, photogenic 15-year-old on the front page of Time Magazine and later in front of the UN to talk about the importance of education for woman’s equality.
Adnan Rashid – you are pathetic. I could send two she-bears upon you. But there is already something worse – far worse – to haunt your darkest dreams and incite your worst fears.
Meet Sahar Gul. Sahar Gul is 15. Sahar Gul does not look particularly healthy of happy in this photo. Perhaps this is because she was found chained in a basement, missing fingernails, starved, repeatedly beaten, and covered with burns from electrical wires and heated metal pipes. This rather unfriendly treatment was perpetrated upon Sahar Gul, starting at age 12, when her brother sold her in a forced marriage to another family, who then attempted to force her into prostitution.
The people who did this to Sahar Gul are very bad people. In a just cosm, very bad things would happen to them for doing such terrible things to a young girl. And I hope that very bad things do, in fact, happen to them.
But it is the Afghan parliament that draws my ire in this particular case, along with their judiciary.
There are strong hints that the conviction against the three individuals who were convicted of abusing Sahar Gul were overturned in haste and somewhat covertly. The fact that neither the prosecution, nor Sahar Gul, were invited to the hearing to overturn the conviction – or even informed of it – might, repeat, might suggest a certain bias on the part of the court. That the normally balky and paperwork-intensive Afghani appeals process was set aside and the convictions overturned with great rapidity and a rather minimal amount of paperwork could, by some, be construed as another.
Oh hell, let’s just lay aside any facade of faux objectivity here – the people who did this to Sahar Gul were let off the hook, without even as much as a minimal display of justice or objectivity. And that’s terrible.
But we have to dig deeper to bring this into “Two She-Bears” territory – people can be stupid or evil or biased or prejudiced without religion being involved. It is entirely possible to be stupid or evil or biased or prejudiced without any sort of religious influence whatsoever.
But in this case, the move to release Sahar Gul’s torturers is part of a larger movement in Afghanistan. A movement against woman’s rights, a movement against woman’s freedom, a movement against woman’s equality. The Afghan Parliment is currently pushing through laws, or revisions of laws, to remove the protection of women and girls under the law, to make it harder to prosecute crimes like child marriage, and to remove women from politics.
Why are they doing this?
Because such things are “unislamic”.
Seriously. We can’t protect the rights of our female citizens, prevent them from being chained in basements, having their fingernails ripped out, being tortured and starved, being represented in our government, because doing so would be “unislamic”?
Fuck that sort of Islamic faith.
If your faith tells you that you need to allow people to imprison, torture, and starve people, to make them marry against their will, to deny them a full place in society, then your religion is wrong. There is no way around it. If your deity, or your deity’s representative, tells you that you should do such things then you should FIND ANOTHER DEITY! Because the one you are worshipping now is full of it. Seriously – full of it.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can hear stuff like this – that it is OK to treat certain other people like shit, that it is OK to treat them like property, that it is a VIRTUE (for God’s sake) to torture them or rape them or deny them medical care or designate them somehow as lesser beings, and think to themselves “well, they say that some deity says I should do this, so it must be OK.” Why can’t more people look at things the other way around? “Well, this thing claims to be a deity, but it sure does demand that I do a whole lot of awful, seemingly immoral, outright bastardy things – maybe this is some kind of scam!” I mean really – telemarketers couldn’t make a living selling crap like this over the phone – how can clergy and judges and members of the government actually believe that they can sell it to their people and expect them to buy it?
Beating and starving child brides and trying to force them into prostitution isn’t OK. Ever. Ever. And if any sort of representative of any sort of organization – religious or secular – tells you otherwise they are lying. Seriously – lying, not just misinformed or confused or in error… lying.
And any sort of supposed deity who comes to you in the night or writes to you on golden tablets or descends from heaven or speaks from a flaming plant or in some other way reveals this sort of idea to you in a divinely revelatory sort of way?
Also lying. And no sort of deity at all.
Two She-Bears for you, o wretched members of the Afghan Parliament and judiciary, for carrying on this farce in the name of religion.
My computer has been tied up for a couple of days while I made the transition from Windows to Ubuntu. During that time, it seems that evildoers, sensing that they might be able to get away with something, have been up to considerable shenanigans.
But the Bears are back! Please “bear” with me now, while I get caught up on my smitings!
George Boak
Meet George Boak. George is a Christian faith healer. He was also just recently convicted of groping some of his female patients while his wife of 34 years was in another room.
During the trial, George apparently showed a continued lack of remorse about the matter, made up stuff about the phenomena of “phantom hands” that he had “heard about”, but which the judge called “a significant lie.”
George wasn’t particularly bright. As a Christian faith healer, George should have known the first cardinal rule of swindling the faithful – when you get caught, show great remorse! It’s a virtue – how can you argue against virtue? George should have been really, really sorry, should have used words like “weakened” and “wrong” and “confused”. George should have repeated a request for “forgiveness” – a lot – over and over again. Maybe invoked the power of the Messiah, Lord Jesus, to forgive sins (that might have overplayed his hand though, so he would need to be careful).
Contrition plays well both to the Christian community and to judges.
In any event, George is off to do a two-year stint in jail, and will be on the registered sex offender list for the next ten years. Personally, I think that the two-year jail stint is a bit lenient, but I guess now that it is no longer possible to transport him to Tasmania or put him on a prison hulk somewhere, it’s the best that the British penal system can do – and really, the Tasmanians shouldn’t have to put up with him anyway.
Since George was caught, and convicted, and is being punished, I don’t feel that he qualifies for two she-bears. He doesn’t quite deserve to be rent limb from limb by angry ursids. So instead I send to George a tank full of man-eating seals. Perhaps, like Thecla, he can leap boldly into his new life, and use it for good, to turn things around.
If not, there are always the seals.
Such friendly looking fellows….
Meet Boko Haram. Boko Haram is a militant Jidadic Muslim… excuse me, “Nigerian cultural group”, which has been operating in Nigeria for some time now. I could blather on about them, but probably everything I could tell you about Boko Haram you can find on Wikipedia, so go to it. The important takeaway here is the name – “Boko Haram” is a Hausa phrase meaning “Western Education is Sinful”.
Boko Haram would like to change the things that Nigerians learn in schools, and how they learn them. Consequently, like good citizens of their nation, they get themselves on School Boards and education councils, lobby their government for change, and do their best to persuade others to adopt their views.
Oh wait – no they don’t. They attack schools, shoot children and teachers, and set fire to buildings with kids inside of them, burning them alive.
Oh, and for those of you out there of the Christian persuasion, they also happily and blow up members of religions other than theirs, and are known for such civic activities as gunning down clergy and attacking religious services.
Again, I am forced to ask – just what sort of crazy indoctrination does it take to convince perfectly good mammals to go around burning children alive? Seriously! How do they do it? Is there a class – “Callousness 101” – that these people go through? Do they get locked in a cage starved, and periodically have five-year-olds come in and beat them, like folks do to make dogs mean? What?
I am very pleased to say that despite ongoing horrors committed by Boko Haram, the civil authorities of Nigeria are making a major effort to fight back against these bastards.
“Fear Allah the almighty and be just and fair to all your children.”
– Abu Bakr
This is Suhair al Bata’a. She was thirteen last month when some insane people cut off portions of her genitals in the name of their religion. Suhair al Bata’a’s blood pressure crashed, and she died.
It is common after genital mutilation for the family to throw a party. I bet that Suhir’s death really let the helium out of their balloons.
Female genital mutilation has been outlawed in Egypt since 2008 (and yes, you SHOULD be thinking “Only since 2008? It was legal in one of the more progressive nations in the Middle East until 2008?”) but in rural areas it is estimated that the incidence may still run as high as 75%.
Here’s a charming article on the subject. For your reading pleasure, a nice Egyptian grandmother speaks with pride about how she has made sure all her granddaughters have portions of themselves hacked off at age 11.
For those who still perpetrate this repulsive and inhumane practice in the name of their twisted version of religion –
“IT’S ON!”
JESUS CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS 