https://nitter.net/Esqueer_/status/1684288910808039424
I saw something recently that basically said “Christians being worried about queer people harming their kids is like a banana peel enthusiast who takes her kids to the banana peel factory every week being worried about queer people breaking kids ankles”
Literally a meaningful amount of its social reproduction is based on traumatizing children around Hell and the universal authority (God) condemning their thoughts and feelings
Not all antitheism is the same. On the one hand, you have French revolutionaries messing up the calendar and appropriating churches to spite Catholics. On the other hand, you have debatebros who hate Muslims and trans people so much they become creationists again. I need to study the history of atheist movements sometime and see why the nu-atheists ended up being such a mess.
Some key elements to research would be atheism+ and "elevator-gate" and "gamer-gate"
Definitely some pivotal events, but I think I need to go further back too
PZ Myers went full anti-gamergate-reactionaries and pro trans rights.
This bill has strong bi-partisan support
Oh shit! Oh Fuck!Lizzo promoting a bill co authored by a guy saying that teaching kids about racism is dangerous?
I know most celebs are very obvious, unironic "virtue signallers" (I hate that term, but I can't think of another term), but this is getting into comedic territory. Promoting a bill written by a racist "teaching the darn kids CRT is bad" guy.
I'm going to ascribe this to "she's a rube, not mal intentioned" but also bring up "a celebrity has people they employ that should be able to fully inform them of the consequences of the things they support, so I can't totally let them off the hook".
its the same thing with Jack Black (whoa, weird they appeared in the Mandalorian together) and his support for Autism Speaks. As much as I despise that org as an autistic, I think that Black means well by supporting them. But I also acknowledge that no celebrity can really be written off as a rube because they have way too much access to information.
Strong bipartisan support AND called something like "The Protect Our Children Act." A bill like that is how they'll start throwing us into furnaces.
bi-partisan support
"the right wing party and the very right wing party both agree on this!"
What's fascinating to me is that Christians don't even like the tenets of Christianity.
"Well the rich are virtuous and the poor are evil, but this book says I need to pretend like the opposite is true to get enough good boy points to get into heaven."
I gotta say I’m getting real tired of this hippie commie Jesus shit.
Are we talking about the Jesus who said "Whatever you do to the least of your brothers and sisters, so you do unto me" [Matthew 25:41-45], or the one who said "To those who have much, much will be given, and from those who have little, even what little they have will be taken" [Matthew 25:29]?
Are we talking about the Jesus who said "Sell all you have and give the money to the poor" [Matthew 19:21], or about the Jesus who said "You will always have poor people, so don't waste money on them that could be used to glorify me instead" [Matthew 26:8-11]?
Did he say "Love your neighbour as yourself" [Matthew 22:39], or did he say "I have come to set father against son and mother against daughter! Anyone who does not hate his family is not worthy of me!" [Matthew 10:34-37]?
I have never understood the desire to run defense for Christianity. You can talk about liberation theology day and night but I’m not just gonna forget that the book wants people like me dead while supposed allies go “that wasn’t real Christianity”
I know you have to work with Christians but I’m not just gonna ignore the basic tenets and go “I can fix him” but with organized religion
Jesus' message, 99% of the time, is just, "the only thing that really matters is your devotion to me, messiah, and through this, your eternal life after the apocalypse".
The Bible has him say this in 200 different ways through parables and examplea of how you can do this, but people keep getting hung up on the context rather than the message. I think part of the issue is that most people, Christians included, never just sit down and read the Bible cover to cover, or even just the Gospels.
Matthew 25 is a parable about stewardship, and how one should try to improve with what they're given - the last line there is directed to a man who was entrusted with a bag of gold, and instead of doing anything with it simply buried it. It is still some prosperity gospel bullshit though, as it's presented with the framing of a slaveowner expecting investment returns from his slaves - it Ain't Good, that's for sure.
Matthew 10 is in the context of an argument between family, not Jesus coming to rend families forcefully apart. The full passage is about how what the disciples are going out to preach will cause divisions, because they're preaching something new that goes against what was at the time the ruling class, which sounds a bit familiar to me.
I don't disagree that the Bible has some fucked up shit, and that it has been used to justify some of if not all the world's most heinous events, but I'd like to think we're all better than
atheists grabbing single lines from larger passages.I absolutely love being called a stormfront atheist for being too harsh on fucking Christianity. I’m sorry, next time I’ll write you a fucking thesis dissecting the entire religion.
I spent years and years of my childhood being terrorized by these people only to come here and get scolded for being a big meanie. I got near daily death threats and attacks so ex-fucking-cuse me if I’m a little upset. Not real Christianity. Not real Christianity. Not real Christianity. Always the same fucking line.
I have absolutely zero patience for someone whose first instinct is to leap to Christianity’s defense. I was nearly driven to suicide by Christians but I guess I should’ve given them a second chance.
I want the soviets back. At least they didn’t pearl clutch about how we need to respect Christianity.
I apologize, that all came out harsher than intended. I do agree, as a religion Christianity has pretty much been the dominant for the worst shit the world's dealt with. My home country had Christian-backed genocides well into the 90s, and that shit is inexcusable.
It came from me finding liberation theology an interesting concept, but not if it comes at the cost of harming comrades - that's equally inexcusable. I'm sorry, comrade.
I’m sorry as well for the way I reacted. I’m extremely sensitive when it comes to discussions of Christianity because of what I went through as a kid. I know not all Christians are irredeemably evil people but the base religion is to me what I imagine the devil must be to an orthodox believer.
I simply can't take religious people seriously, especially people who seem to know about historical/dialectical materialism. On one hand, I can see how the "epic reddit atheist debater" attitude is fucking annoying, but on the other hand, they're not exactly wrong.
We have the tool required to analyze modern contradictions and resolve them. What are you gleaning from ancient texts that are filled with back-to-back pages of instructions how to create the exact opposite society we want? It would be bad to cherry pick and quote mine from Mein Kampf to form your ideology. It's also bad to do that with the Bible.
I think it's still useful as a way to check whether someone is a Christ believer for the sake of Christ or a Christ believer for the sake of backing up bigotry.
If you give them all the jesus was a leftist quotes, some will become more sympathetic toward socialist ideas. Others will shut their brains off and go lalallalala jesus hates gays because I can't read.
The Bible (and all holy texts) are full of contradictions, arguments about translations, and other issues. A wise person has two basic choices with them.
- Reject them entirely
- Just openly choose to reject the bad stuff and embrace the good stuff and not be embarrassed by it.
Liberation theologians basically choose to do the later if they're smart about it (some of them claim they aren't, and say what they believe is "True christianity" and I agree that that is dumb.)
I was raised in a religion (Christian Science) where I think the best part of it was that they openly said they don't take the Bible literally but instead take the "inspired word of the Bible". So I have always found Biblical literalists to be a joke. Conversely though, I have also found athiets who insist that Christians MUST take responsibility for every word thats in the Bible (or Muslims with the Quran) to be silly as well. We should want religious people to take a progressive interpretation of their religion, not try to guilt them for aspects of the text they don't actually believe in. It may strike athiets as hypocritical, but for me as someone who's experience with religion was that you're SUPPOSED to do that, its simply how you should approach religious texts. They're inherently up to interpreation.
So while I am not longer religious and only barely spiritual, I do encourage progressive interpretations of Christianity and support progressive Christians and dont think they have to answer for passages that are bad if they dont support the message those passages are sending.
Disclosure: Because my experience with religion being mostly positive despite the fact that I am no longer religious, combined with my autism, I tend to find it difficult to relate to people who have experienced religious trauma. I've been trying to adjust to this for awhile, but its been difficult.
Biblical literalists really are a fucking joke, and I don't think they're at all consistent. I just saw someone bring up a passage from the bible that I've heard before but didn't think about in this context:
"“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple."
Like lol, I'm sure every one of those dumbasses is like oh, he means it metaphori- OH NO NOT THAT
if you take the bible literally, then you shouldn't wear mixed fabrics lmao
Just openly choose to reject the bad stuff and embrace the good stuff and not be embarrassed by it.
What's the basis of the moral framework you use to distinguish "good stuff" from "bad stuff"? Why is it not problematic for a document that claims to be the [inspired] word of God full of bad stuff?
What's the basis of the moral framework you use to distinguish "good stuff" from "bad stuff"?
The stuff that fits the moral framework I already have is good, the stuff that supports things I find evil are bad. I have a moral lense already, I dont rely on the text to make it for me.
Why is it not problematic for a document that claims to be the [inspired] word of God full of bad stuff?
The bible is a book written by multiple flawed human beings, not God. Some Christians call in the Word of God, but this is counter to reality. I dont support that view. My Sunday School teacher in Christian Science ACTIVLY taught us the flawed human history of the bible. For CSists "inspired word" means your OWN divine inspiration interpreting the text.
Again, I'm personally no longer religious, but I support people who take the bible and say "I know this is written by humans, so I can take what fits the moral framework I think is correct and reject the things that don't" and as long as I agree with that moral framework I will support that.
As much as I agree this is a realist perspective on what most Christians actually do, I find both the underlying perspective and the fact that you'd support it really confusing here. If your book with instructions for living a moral life consists of a mixture of good and bad advice and you have to rely on a sense of moral intuition to avoid taking the bad advice, the book seems useless at best and actively harmful if you think it's possible for moral intuition to be wrong, since you aren't provided the tools for telling when you're off track and some of the advice being provided is pretty terrible and might not occur to someone who hasn't read the book. In practice it seems like a lot of people use that moral intuition to justify an underlying or instinctive bigotry. In an environment that encourages self-interrogation and growth they might challenge and dismantle those beliefs, but instead they are prevented from doing so because they're already being told that whatever they believe is automatically correct. It seems like a disservice to those people when you offer support for the latter.
I offer my support when it leads them to the right conclusions and dont when it doesnt. Its really not that complicated for me.
If you're looking for something to fill the spiritual void, you might be interested in Gnosticism. The concept of the demiurge is that the Christian God is real, but he is the devil and there is a greater "true" god.
Christians are gleefully evil in the real world, and almost seem to be aware of their amoral decadence, and fucking love it. Look at 4chan, from the get-go the whole concept is "we are like minions, let us be as horrible and evil as humanely possible." and surprise surprise, the WASP American Republican is one of the few people on earth they do not despise. I do not think ALL Christians are evil, however since religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature and all that fun stuff.
Look, I hate the Vatican for that and other reasons, but they are not a significant player in the basis for this bill being passed except insofar as Protestantism existing is their fault in the first place.
In other countries Catholicism is the major ideology promoting genocide of the LGBT+ community. In countries that don't have a major evangelical protestant prescence the Catholic church is happy to fill that niche
That's only because the Vatican is too busy pushing anti-queer policies in Europe. The Catholic church very much is a threat for the safety of queer people.
Look, I hate the Vatican for that and other reasons
Then why defend it? I'm baffled by the need to speak up in defense of the evil multi-billion-dollar centuries-old institution just because it isn't taking first place in this particular shit olympics.
Because we should be accurate with our accusations and the situation in America (besides being a problem of neoliberalism more than anything) is clearly not from "Christianity" writ-large.
Heaven forbid we accuse the Proud Boys of something the skinheads are doing, because the problem is clearly not from "Fascism" writ-large.
Aside from the significant point that there are countless good Christians and the only good fascist is a dead fascist, yes, we should be sure that our claims are actually true if we want for those claims to be useful for making further inferences and not just sloganeering.
If we treat all Christians and all Christian sects as the same even when some problems are specific to one because "most of them have some problem anyway so fuck them," your analysis is liable to fall apart within the next two steps if you even bother making something of it beyond "fuck those guys".
I'm really confused by the small but persistent group of posters on this website that feels the need to jump up in defense of otherwise indefensible institutions just because in this one instance their fingerprints aren't explicitly evident or because their beliefs are being oversimplified. Do you think the Heritage Foundation is bereft of Catholics? Is the Catholic Church speaking out against this bill or otherwise trying to prevent its passage? Do you think the very probable no answers to the previous questions are indicative that this bill probably conforms to their own beliefs and they're happy to let the other, more outspoken groups take the flak because they know every time they wade into the culture war stuff they lose more followers because people are waking up to their bullshit and wisely walking away from it? Do you think the Catholic Church deserves to be shielded from rhetorical flak on this bear-themed shitposting website because it'll hurt our collective reputation of impartiality if they get accused of something they very likely support?
Getting back to Christianity as a whole, I don't see how you think there's a positive case to be made here. At best, Christians are personally moral but still providing cultural cover for genocidal institutions by being 'the good ones' and are most likely not following their religion perfectly (or even doing more than paying lip service), i.e., are good in spite of their religion and not because of it. At worst, those Christians are active participants in sexual abuse and other crimes and are not by any reasonable yardstick good people, and they're often shielded from consequences by those same 'good ones'. Sure, I don't think that being Christian deserves death the same way being a Fascist does but you probably also feel the same way about your Trump-supporting uncle and the ideologies underlying both of those choices are (and the substantial overlap between the two cannot be written off as coincidental), without caveat, irredeemable garbage.
on this bear-themed shitposting website
"Waaah, stop making arguments while I continue to make arguments!" Quit with the bullshit copouts.
because it'll hurt our collective reputation of impartiality
Reread my last comment. I specifically was not talking about how you will appear to other people but rather how you will be able to or will fail to construct valid inferences. If you don't understand the difference, that's the first thing you should learn. Rhetoric and logic are different fields with different usefulness, as much as debatebro types love to call rhetoric logic.
I don't have a particular interest in defending Catholics, I think other people just jumped on that as low-hanging fruit. I'm ultimately an antitheist, but I think browbeating people in the general population about such a thing is stupid bullshit and a phase that I was able to get past in my teenage years. I don't know your age, but I hope you also get over it.
I'm not fucking caping for Pope Francis. Multiple times on this fucking website when people did the "omg most progressive pope!" thing I reminded them about his claim that "gossip" (discussing sexual abuse allegations) was a worse virus than covid.
But we must also acknowledge that this is a Christian. I hope there are one day no Christians and in the meantime we should oppose the power of imperialist religious institutions like the Vatican, but in the meantime castigating leftist Christians who are outspoken in their opposition to christofascists is stupid and childish.
Also, independent of this specific topic, being correct matters. You have no hope of being able to understand just about anything in the world if you think that something being bad means that trying to understand it is a waste of time. You should know your enemy.
Dammit, you got me. Please post this to copypasta, it's a gem. The Reverened Wright clip is
No, are you saying that mixture of pedantry, pearl clutching and nonsequitur was in earnest?
The hilarity comes from how you attempted to employ the clip, not the clip itself.
Shall we say Wright is not a Christian who is speaking as a Christian?
Do you think all (or even a majority) of self-identifying Christians share the opinion being expressed in the video? If not, can you say that Christianity reliably guides people to having that opinion?
"Most Christians are reactionary -> Christianity is fundamentally reactionary" is not the tight inference you think it is.
I don't give a shit about protecting Christian institutions, see the very same fucking comment you selectively quoted, which elsewhere discusses Pope Francis being an outspoken defender of pedophile priests.
For what it's worth, American evangelicals and the dominionist crowd are absolutely at play here. Where the Heritage Foundation's grubby hands end up, implicitly so do theirs.
I don't disagree, but I am arguing against applying an atomized concept of responsibility. Why must we waste our time meting out blame to one of the hydra's myriad heads instead of focusing on the corpus? The other sects of Christianity, even if not directly involved, still contributed to the sociopolitical landscape where this legislation is considered acceptable and most likely tacitly approve.
i truly wish these people would feel even an ounce of dysphoria in their ghoulish fucking lives
Mandatory hrt for all transphobes. Forcible experience of empathy for the cis ones who lack it, help for closet self-hating trans people.
Redditors want to kill all homeless people after seeing a video of one being annoying. I want everyone against adolescent HRT to be put on cross-sex hormones for five years. We are not the same!
I wish them all a brief and final stay with McConnell in the stroke unit.
I think they do, they just handle it in the worst way possible: repressing the suffering and attacking anyone that doesn't confirm their approach.
But continued to use Russia's gay propaganda laws as reasoning that they are evil orks who must be slaughtered.
Not when it's in reference to the very same chauvinists who use laws like that in other countries to imply that they're uncivillized and should be bombed
If there’s one thing non-negotiable on here, it’s our love for our trans comrades
im honestly baffled how anyone could think hexbear is "the moral panic site", or be this supremely confident of their own ability to hoodwink the userbase here into supporting a hateful bill. this is the most trans-positive site I've found on the internet
ah okay, guess I misunderstood the main point of your comment— and I forgot that since I have ignored most of the struggle session topics around personal consumption, I have probably missed some heated arguments over porn.
adult content
Are you implying that sex trade abolitionists are equivalent to queer bashers?
I'm genuinely trying to figure out what you're talking about because "hexbear would support this bill if the GOP disguised the language a little more" is something that could only possibly be the result of some previous beef, and that was the most plausible scenario I could come up with.
Using the capitalist state to punish people who post sexual content isn't sex trade abolition though, it only facilitates a culture of secrecy that makes those affected more vulnerable
Ok but who's advocating for that?
I spend months at a time away from this site, so I'm just trying to figure out what previous drama would cause this person to think that the site is full of moral panic puritans, and "adult content" jumped out at me.
A lot of people are pushing back on your comment but a while ago someone on here was defending a very similar censorship bill passed in Utah because it was anti-porn.
In my experience the types of people who become full on anti porn have had traumatic sexual experiences so I try to keep that in mind.
Yeah we're a bit prudish, not even just about porn but about anything that could imply being sexual. You make one thirsty comment or call someone hot and you get the volcel vanguard on your ass!
If things legitimately got that bad here I'd leave the site and permanently log off. I know it's got flaws ATM but I think the mods have done a good job of keeping the reactionaries posing as leftists out.
I guess thats reassuring. I still wish this wasnt the moral panic site, like im sure If i branded the bill differently I could get many people here onboard.
???
Wut? Are you posting on the right site? Theres no way you could get people on this site to be in favor of an anti trans bill no matter how you phrased it. Can you provide some examples of the moral panic you're referring to? Mostly so mods can go ban the people responsible because that's not what's going on here.
Well for the record I don't think you're crazy and I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just surprised to see this take and am curious as to where it's coming from. I get not having the energy to engage in it though, hope you're feeling better soon
I guess thats reassuring. I still wish this wasnt the moral panic site, like im sure If i branded the bill differently I could get many people here onboard.
????
You're not wrong, people here support China banning porn for all ages, they're just iffy about the US doing it. If this bill was only for censoring porn and nothing else we would probably see some support for it
There are so many censorship bills that have been passed over the last twenty years to "won't somebody think of the children!" And they're all bullshit. Utter bullshit.
you'll see this site is very weird about sex
All we’re doing is making jokes abt being hentai-free volcels lmao
Ah yes, the transgender stuff is dangerous but the extreme amounts of openly nazi shit on the internet, that kids have very easy access to, is just going to be ignored.
The co author of the bill is a racist so of course he'll ignore the Nazi shit online
Some are, america is a cursed place
But yeah, proportionately very few
Death to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to AmericaDeath to America
But guys! Trans people can fight in imperialist wars now! Biden does love the LGBTS!!!/s
Free speech for me but not for thee.
I don't care, we need the edgy atheists to make a comeback. Hopefully this time with better gatekeeping to keep out people who will just become future problems.
I don't care, we need the edgy atheists to make a comeback.
They never left, they just focused their efforts on being racist and Islamophobic - causing them to form an alliance with Evangelicals and Trad Caths.
digital spaces
no one could have predicted that Foucaultian anti-communist PMC radlib ideology would end up this way! No one knew!
Knowing the US government they're just gonna ban anything left of the overton window, I’m sure they’ll try their hardest to prevent teens from learning about Marxism
They'll probably restrict anything that might remotely be "disturbing for kids” too, even if it has important historical context, like photos of imperialist/fascist atrocities. And they'll probably ban them from seeing talk about serious mental health issues, even if it's talked about in productive/helpful ways (like how tiktok completely blacklists the word "depression" to the point you'll get "no results" when searching the word)
