Faith’s Epic Fails, Now on Video

If you prefer sitting back and watching the (ahem) less successful societal contributions by people of faith, get some popcorn and prepare to be dazzled by the YouTube channel of Conversation With A. Every month or so, the people behind Conversation With A upload an eye-opening new video that’s very much along the lines of Moral Compass — a collection of news stories about, as we say, “faith’s epic fails.”

Here’s their latest. Enjoy!

[Hat tip: Hemant Mehta]

Seduced By Not-So-Holy Men

The author and history professor Garry Willis is both a practicing Catholic and one of Catholicism’s most ardent critics. To his great credit, Willis has been at the forefront of the movement to finally shine a spotlight on child abuse by clergy.

After I read about the exploits of Baptist preacher Jack Schaap, who had sex with a troubled teenager entrusted to his pastoral care and then told her that their extramarital affair was blessed by Jesus, I went looking for something Willis wrote eleven years ago. This is the passage. Emphasis mine.

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Priestly pedophilia is … set apart from other varieties by the fact that the seduction technique employs religion. Almost always some form of prayer has been used as foreplay. The very places where the molestation occurs are redolent of religion — the sacristy, the confessional, the rectory, Catholic schools and clubs with sacred pictures on the walls. One of the victims of Father Paul Shanley, of the Boston archdiocese, says that his ordeal began in the confessional, when he confessed the “sin” of masturbation. The priest told him that masturbation could be a “lesser evil” and that he would help him work out his problem. He did this by taking him to a cabin he kept in the woods, where the priest taught the boy how they could masturbate each other.

This pattern occurs over and over — a conjunction of the overstrict sexual instruction of the Church (e.g., on the mortal sinfulness of masturbation, even one occurrence of which can, if not confessed, send one to hell) and a guide who can free one of inexplicably dark teaching by inexplicably sacred exceptions. The victim is disarmed by sophistication and the predator has a special arsenal of stun devices. He uses religion to sanction what he is up to, even calling sex part of his priestly ministry.

Schaap is a Baptist, not a Catholic — but we see the exact same scenario play out, full of faux-holy lecherousness and the kind of betrayal that makes Judas look like a saint. These are kids, for fuck’s sake: many times more vulnerable — and infinitely more susceptible to claims of authority — than those of us who have safely crossed into adulthood.

Willis lays out the ink-black perfidy of this behavior just about as well as anyone could. And for that, regardless of our own God-belief or non-belief, we all ought to thank him.

[image via Catholic Crime]

All Fired Up: Saudis Have a Machine Gun Party

Cool shindig, I’m sure. Except maybe for the part where they’re indiscriminately spraying thousands of lethal bullets into the air.

We all know — I think — that what goes up must come down. People are frequently killed by so-called celebratory gunfire.

Not that these guys care. Some kid accidentally getting shot in the head — clearly not their problem. In fact, they’d surely never even question God’s will. Allahu akbar!

Think of them next time you fill up your tank.

Invasion of the Penis Snatchers

On second thought, we’ll call this one “Dickless in Gaza.” Or maybe “Acockalypse Now.” Heh.

Academics observing reports of penis snatching on the [African] continent have previously deemed it an urban phenomenon — a manifestation of the anxieties that arise when a village becomes a city and rural people find themselves living among crowds of unfamiliar people. So a U.S. anthropologist was ‘intrigued’ when she arrived in the tiny hamlet of Tiringoulou in the Central African Republic, to find two villagers claiming to have been the victims of genital theft. Previous instances have been reported in crowded centers like Lagos, Nigeria, or Douala, in Cameroon.

Louisa Lombard, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, said villagers in Tiringoulou told her of a traveller [who], upon arriving on a Sudanese merchant truck, removed two men’s penises with a handshake. The academic was told the stranger had targeted a tea seller in the market and a second man. … “After handing over his money, he [the stranger] clasped the vendor’s hand. The tea seller felt an electric tingling course through his body and immediately sensed that his penis had shrunk to a size smaller than that of a baby’s. His yells quickly drew a crowd. Somehow in the fray a second man fell victim as well.”

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Several eyewitnesses assured her the “appendages did indeed shrink dramatically.”

Ms Lombard described victims “on both sides” of the phenomenon, which she [said] was linked to a “general resurgence of witchcraft” in Africa. Having visited one of the so-called victims and finding that he “clearly seemed to be suffering” as he lay listless in the shade at his home, the academic was later told that the alleged penis snatcher had been executed by gunshot by members of the armed rebel group that governs Tiringoulou.

The locals claim that Western medicine can offer no remedy to victims of this terrifying magic. The best solution is (but of course!) to kill the alleged penis snatchers. Mobs in Africa frequently do exactly that.

[image via The Punch]

Egypt: Any Religious Nanny May Arrest You

Egypt’s Prosecutor-General, the highest law-enforcement official in the land, wants to allow citizens to arrest anyone — tourists included — for religious “crimes” like blasphemy.

Moderates warn that this will do incalculable damage to Egypt’s tourism industry.

Foreign visitors, whether or not they did anything wrong, should reckon with the possibility that they’ll be mistreated or blackmailed by any Egyptian citizen with a bone to pick over anything at all.

Promise?

Promise?

Some warn of even more dire consequences: that an open season on people deemed insufficiently pious could lead to civil war.

Egypt has fallen to the lowest rank out of 140 nations in terms of safety and security — behind Pakistan, Chad and Yemen — in the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s most recent Travel and Tourism (T&T) competitiveness index.

[image via Arabian Business]

Steve Katz, Assemblymon

Assemblyman Dr. Steve Katz of New York is a Tea Partier who campaigned on a platform of law and order, gun rights, religious freedom, and sanctity of life. He presents himself as a ramrod-straight model citizen; as such, he naturally has an aversion to the use of illicit drugs — and this brave man isn’t afraid to come right out and say so.

Loved ones noticed subtle changes in Assemblyman Steve King (R-NY) after the devil weed began taking over his life.

Friends and family members noticed subtle changes in Assemblyman Steve Katz (R-NY) after the devil weed began taking over his life.

Katz is a member of the Assembly’s Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Committee. Last year, he voted against a bill to legalize medical marijuana. In a recent mailer to constituents, he decried “an increase in drug use and drunk driving” by New York’s godless yoot.

You can probably guess what’s next.

The other day, Katz was pulled over for breaking the speed limit (80 miles in an 65-mph zone). The trooper who asked for his license and registration detected a strong odor of marijuana and asked Katz about it; the politician then produced a small bag of marijuana. He was charged with speeding and unlawful possession.

An hour later, Katz took the Assembly floor to argue — a bit woozily? — against a bill that would make it easier for trained and qualified medical personnel to administer pain relief (we must fight the scourge of drug abuse, people, amirite?). He seemed less than coherent and addressed a female colleague as a man.

Dr. Katz is due in court on March 28, to receive some of that old-fashioned law and order he loves so much.

Gay is Now OK Since My Son Turned Out That Way

Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has a long history of opposing gay rights. He was a co-sponsor of DOMA, the bill that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage. In 1999, he voted to prevent gays from adopting in Washington DC.

In 2011 his son came out. A year went by. Another year went by. And finally, Senator Portman decided that it was time to stop treating gays as sub-human, and announced that he now supports same-sex marriage.

His conversion has received praise from many quarters. Personally, I’m not impressed. While it’s always good to see politicians change their positions in light of new information, Portman only changed his mind when the results of his anti-gay stance affected him personally. Even then it took him two years wake up. His decision was purely emotional, instead of being based on logic or reason. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.

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The reactions to his change of heart have been predictable and entertaining. Most of his hard-right Republican colleagues are doing a jittery side-stepping dance, trying to support him while avoiding any appearance of favoring human rights for those icky gays.

The fundamentalist world is, of course, in an uproar.

One of the most appalling and amusing responses to date has been from Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition. Her ham-fisted parody of Sen. Portman’s announcement changes “gay” to “drunk driving.”

He is a drunk driver and has been driving drunk regularly since college. 
I have taken several days to reflect on this and I have decided to reverse my earlier opposition to drunk driving.

My child is a drunk driver and I love him. It is a part of his identity, who he is.

You can read the senator’s article here, and Lafferty’s failed attempt at humor here.

We should be delighted with the responses from the fundamentalists. The more they speak, the more they reveal how ridiculous, silly, and hateful their positions are.

[Image via ABC News]

Obey the Lord and Beat Your Kid to Death

The little girl was beaten for seven hours until she died. Her parents stopped only for short prayer breaks.

 

Pchyolki: Take Back Alaska From the Gays!

Personally, I don’t think I’ll miss it.

A fundamentalist Russian Orthodox group has filed a lawsuit claiming President Barack Obama’s support of gay marriage invalidates the 1867 sale of Alaska. The Pchyolki are a group best known for advising its members to use violence if necessary to protect churches from “blasphemers” like the rock group Pussy Riot. …

In court papers, the Pchyolki said the U.S. purchase of Alaska was not legal because the contract specified payment in gold coins and the United States wrote a check for $7.2 million, which would be a far larger sum in today’s dollars. The Pchyolki or Bees, organized in 2008, have a stated goal of protecting orphans’ rights. They campaign against sex education in schools and advised, after the Pussy Riot arrests, that the faithful could protect churches by damaging equipment used by “blasphemers” with holy water, although they said “bloodshed” was only acceptable away from church property.

Drop Cloth Jesus

When Jesus was done with toast and shower mold and bird poop as a medium, he moved on to something more conventionally artistic: Paint.

You could call it a divine sign: a Saugus man said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Jesus Christ on a drop cloth at his home. “My heart went a million miles an hour. I was hyperventilating,” said Brian Krantz.

Facepalm-worthy stuff, but at least we get a new exclamation out of it; here at Moral Compass HQ, our future expression of frustration or astonishment will be “Sweet Jesus Christ on a drop cloth!” Thank you, Mr. Krantz.

For fun findings on the human brain’s face-detection proclivities, see here. Cliff Notes version: the more gullible people are, the more they’ll “recognize” random patterns as meaningful images.

God’s Will

Different religion, same bull:

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Abdullah Abdel Hamid, a professor at Al-Azhar University and Salafist preacher, described Egyptian government officials as “enemies of God,” following their statements about eradicating millions of locusts who infested several of Egypt’s governates in the last few weeks, Al-Watan newspaper reported on Friday

“Locusts embody a gift from God to humans living on Earth; how dare they say such things?” Abdel Hamid said at a Friday sermon in the Egyptian canal city of Suez. Abdel Hamid argued that no “police or military troops” could stop the locusts, as “God’s will” cannot be challenged.

[image via Ahram Online]

Breaking News: Sweeping Changes at Vatican

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