271 Comments

They have their Great Commission and anyone who stands in their way is an agent of evil. It's a perfect license to disregard anyone who tells them they're being obnoxious and an excuse to be as coercive as they desire. The fact you've heard it all a million times before is irrelevant to them, you haven't heard them tell you and they have the perfect argument to convince you when they tell you the next time.

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It's also the case that this isn't the first, second, or third time something like this has happened and organizations like the FFRF and American Atheists have intevened on behalf of those who aren't in Ivey's fan club. You'd think they would have heard about the untoward consequences of such action.

"Oh, but THAT wouldn't happen to ME," thinks Ivey. Gee, where have I heard THAT before...

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Unfortunately, many believers see the Great Commission as a license to do whatever they can to compel belief.

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The rest just see it as a license to annoy the fuck out of people.

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I've noticed that the annoyance can at times be mutual. LOL!

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What do they have to be annoyed about? No one's repeating their fantasies a million times a week at them. Mostly they're being told to respect other people's right to live their lives without interference. And to follow the same rules as everyone else.

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You've never run into an "evangelical" atheist? They can be just as obnoxious as evangelical believers.

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No. Can't say as I have. I mostly see atheists responding to believers who engaged with them. And even if such beasts exist, they are far fewer in number than evangelical believers.

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Even granting that there are such people, they are a submicroscopic minority compared to the enormous numbers of obnoxious christians running loose in this benighted country. Their avowed purpose is to make it even MORE benighted.

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Under the U.S. Constitution, rights are not matters of majority rule. Rights exist to protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority. The folks in Alabama pushing religion at a public university do not seem to grasp that essential fact.

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To be fair, rights aren't matters of majority rule in red states, either- Republicans are just plenty happy to leverage gerrymandering and voter suppression to ensure they get to fuck with peoples' rights even when they're 𝘯𝘰𝘵 the majority.

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Why does the FFRF’s base location have anything to do with whether their letter is accurate? Someone in the state complained and the expert organization just happens to be based in Wisconsin. Its location does not keep it from being well versed in the laws of the country and in each state, or even the culture of the places they address.

Ivey is way off base. And these things are never about the coaches’ personal religious beliefs. It’s always about how they overstep their place to push their religion on others under their power. But she knows, and everyone who insists on doing or defending this know they won’t win if they are honest about their intentions or the situation. Just like the pro-life folks manipulate the narrative, the illegal proselytizers can’t get the sympathy unless they lie.

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Well, you see, Wisconsin is north of the Mason-Dixon line, and people from up there can't be expected to understand how things are done in Alabama, because, well, you know, they're heathens who just don't know anything up there. God's People live in Alabama, certainly not in some barbaric backwater like Wisconsin! /patronizing southern accent /sarcasm /snark

In the more common parlance, it doesn't matter if the FFRF is right; Ivey's claiming to be on 'God's' side, therefore any argument presented by the FFRF is completely invalid. Feel free to roll your eyes, I know I did; just be careful not to roll them too hard, wouldn't want them to pop out of your head or anything.

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I remember Ivey saying she BELIEVED the allegations against Moore and was still going to vote for him. What a good Christian!

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The faith is all.

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I remember reading a comment by Adam Jentleson (he used to work for Harry Reid) saying that evangelical Christians are the most partisan Republicans out there.

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The faith that cishet White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males are superior to all other life forms on the planet.

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"...we will not be intimidated by out-of-state interest groups..."

Someone reminded me, where is Jesus from*?

*supposedly

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Bet Ivey was ok with NOM.

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He was just accidentally born in Them Heathen Lands. Everybody knows that Jesus, in his heart, was a True American.

One might even say a Real American Hero.

Jesus Joe! "Yo Joe!"

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So, just to be clear, in the minds of evangelicals, atheist college professors are an active threat to the faith of the students, SJW college professors are dangerous crusaders of the woke ideology, but openly practicing evangelicals holding huge events are in no way coercive at all.

Thinking is not the strong suit here, is it?

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Because thinking is hard. Believing is easy.

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...and that much has never changed.

"𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘺𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘫𝘰𝘪𝘯'𝘥,

𝘈𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺, 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘷'𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥;

𝘔𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷'𝘥, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘥,

𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶'𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥;

𝘈 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘶𝘨𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘴 𝘰'𝘦𝘳-𝘳𝘶𝘯,

𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩'𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘯."

- Alexander Pope, 𝘈𝘯 𝘌𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘊𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘮 (1711)

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𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶'𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘰𝘥;

There's the Dunning -Kruger effect in one phrase.

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Why do I see Lisa holding a talking Malibu Stacey doll?

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Ivey misunderstands nothing. She knows perfectly well the basic concepts our country is meant to follow. She doesn’t care and doesn’t agree with them. She believes it’s fine and good for her and those like her to break those fundamental boundaries in order to gain and cement power. It’s not about faith. It’s about power. Religion is just the window dressing. They believe in might equals right.

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Her behavior is nothing but 7 Mountains Dominionism come to life.

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A lot of that going around lately.

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Alabama. Tied with Mississippi as most religious state in the country. Alabama is also the most conservative state in the country. I'd be shocked if this HADN'T happened.

This is why we keep religion and state separated. The (mostly) Deist founders knew what Christians liked to get up to.

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"society would be worse off were we to purge religion from our public institutions"

Purging *religion* entirely would indeed harm Jewish students, Muslim students, Buddhist students ect.

Purging *Christianity* would be an upgrade for literally everyone.

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Purging religion isn't the goal. Getting religion to understand its place in a society with a SECULAR GOVERNMENT 𝗜𝗦.

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Problem is, Christianity will never get there. It's predicated on authoritarian abuse and power grabs. A Christianity *capable* of understanding it's place and not trying to take control wouldn't be Christianity anymore.

As long as it's still around, it'll be trying to take over. Even if, by some fucking miracle, evangelical Christianity died out, "progressive" Christianity would just act as a natural reservoir for fascist Christianity the same way armadillos are natural reservoirs for leprosy.

And that's not even getting into how "progressive" Christianity is just evangelical Christianity that pays lip service to optics.

Christianity and humanity are fundamentally incompatible. One is going to kill the other, and I'd rather have life on the planet continue to exist.

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I'll stipulate for the record that Christianity "will never get there," as you said. What has to happen is that we have to deal (and perhaps with extreme prejudice) with the current phenomenon of Christian Nationalism. I see the primary focus of that conflict as being the 2024 election, not just the presidential event, but EVERYTHING down-ticket from that. If Biden can earn another four years and we can get ourselves a blue House and Senate, that will go a fair distance toward frustrating the "Nat-Cs," at least for the time being. It should go without saying that another Trump presidency would be catastrophic for the United States and for secularism and that cannot be tolerated in any way, shape, or form.

It may be that the optimum goal in re: Christianity in general is to make it IRRELEVANT, though even that is one hard row to hoe.

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Religion should be purged from all public institutions, if those institutions are paid for with tax dollars and are government related in any way.

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How is Islam, or any other religion, better than Christianity, Stalin?

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1: leaping right to islam is a choice. Not a good one, but a choice.

2: islam isn't trying to take over this country. Neither is Buddhism, Jainism, or Judaism, or any of the indigenous belief systems. When any of them stage a coup in DC we'll talk. Christianity is the problem in the US.

3: Christianity is almost uniquely toxic. It's extremely weird compared to other religions. In America and the eurosphere it's the only religion most people have any real experience with, but that experience does not extrapolate out to other religions.

I highly recommend learning about religions that aren't Christianity. From the people who actually practice them.

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Everything you have said is entirely a subjective rant, except that Christianity is the problem in the U.S. Christianity is no more toxic than Islam, Orthodox Judaism, Hinduism under Modi, or even Buddhism in countries like Myanmar. As someone pointed out, religion should be purged from public institutions as per the Establishment Clause.

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I think the point they were making – and it's quite a valid one – is that Christianity is the major problem in the US. Where most of the people on this site live. Other religions might be toxic but they're too small to make much of a difference.

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I would agree with that, but it's not what he said.

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Tell me you don't know anything about other religions without telling me...

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Tell me you have a better response than a weak ad hominem.

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Pointing out that you're too ignorant to talk about this isn't an ad hominem. It's a statement of fact.

Nondogmatic religions exist.

Indigenous belief systems have been criminalized for decades, indigenous people who want to reconnect with the culture that Christianity tried its damnedest to eradicate shouldn't be caught up in an overly wide ban because of the horrible shit christians do as a matter of course.

Christians have been commiting an on again off again active genocide against Jews for most of the past two thousand years. Jews shouldn't be punished by tarring them with the same brush as the people who have been trying to butcher them.

The secular vs religious distinction is a CHRISTIAN thing. It developed because different denominations of christians couldn't live in proximity with each other without whichever one happened to be in power trying to kill the others. See: Ireland, and Europe's internecine church wars.

A strict binary of secular vs religious doesn't fucking map out to "all religions". Most other religions don't have that distinction, it's all just folded up into culture. Judaism is an ethnoreligion, for example. Saying you want to end all religions means you want to end all Jews. The people and the culture are inextricably entwined.

Christianity *isn't* like that. There's no foundational culture to it. The Bible is a compilation of stolen and egregiously mistranslated Jewish scripture and outright fabrications inserted by whoever happened to be in power at the time.

Christianity is like a cancer in that it corrupts and destroys other cultures it infects. Ending Christianity is like excising a lung tumor. Ending "all religions" is like taking out the entire lung for no reason.

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Being a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, I was aware of the interplay between Kay Ivey and the FFRF from their newsletters. To put it simply, I'm pleased with the gang from Madison, Wisconsin and PISSED at Ivey and her clueless attitude. Once again, you have someone who, even in a governmental position, treats her state like a bubble with nothing but Christians in it, when I seriously suspect there are not just minority beliefs extant but those with NO belief. Ivey does a blatant and serious disservice to those in the Cotton State who are NOT of her belief system. I have little doubt but that she thinks little to nothing of the potential tyranny of the majority being exercised with those Christian activities, being carried out under public auspices and approval, never mind the potential for peer pressure among students and adults alike.

Ivey needs to wake up and smell the coffee ... and also the potential for future legal issues, caused by her insensitivity

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If they don't vote for her, they don't count.

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All it takes is ONE ... one local citizen who finds those actions problematic, whereupon all sorts of legal woes will befall Ivey and her people.

And the FFRF has a habit of WINNING cases like those.

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With a rational judiciary, certainly. I don't feel we have a rational judiciary anymore. I fear no fundamental right is safe.

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She's a Republican, even if they vote for her they only count as 3/5ths of a person.

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But Christianity is true and they're saving your soul by trying to convert the heathen. So that rifle pointed at your chest is for your own good. As is that burning stick of wood, they want to use to light the gasoline-soaked pyre you're standing on top of.

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If the religion being pushed was anything but evangelical Christianity, the people defending this would be going out of their tiny little minds.

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You'll understand if, in Gov. Ivey's instance, I presume expediency over ignorance.

I don't think she's unaware of the repercussions of her actions, I think she approves of them.

After all, if you genuinely believe in a system of perfect justice sweeping everything up at the end of the story, well, a little arm-twisting along the way's just the cost of doin' bizness, isn't it?

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To Christian Nationalists like Ivey, being "more welcoming...to expressions of faith" only means pushing Jesus. She decries the separation of church and state as not being a thing. She probably believes that the Establishment Clause only prohibits Congress from declaring one denomination to be the official Church of the United States.

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To Kay Ivey: Bless your heart.

(think she'd know what i was getting at if she'd read my comment?)

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I don't know if she'd expect a non-Christian to understand that meaning, so quite possibly no.

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She's an oldster, so she MIGHT know ... which is all the more reason to go for it! 😁

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I am young and non American and I read enough novels to know what it means 🤣

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Well, ain't YOU a hotshot? Yeah ... you ARE! 👍😁

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Allow me a moment to point out here that Gov. Ivey and others like her in Alabama are heavily incentivized to not see anything that might damage the fragile Jesus-bubble they live in. The truth is that Ivey's future ability to get public support may well depend on her ability to be insanely religious; to some degree she's looking out for her own future. This sort of religious grandstanding is expected, and when people don't see it, they start questioning why that 'Satan-worshiper' is allowed to be in charge. This is little more than religion as performance art, and not very good performance art at that, but it's precisely the sort of thing that has become the cultural norm in the area.

The real reason they're going after college kids is that they've run out of other people to convert, I suspect. The only other real option is probably the military. They need new people to convert to 'prove' how Jesus-y they are, and they've run out of other options because the whole state's pretty much Christian or silent on the issue. Auburn's probably hoping the worst of this blows over and they can pretend it never happened; though I personally would guess that won't happen.

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Gee, this makes them sound like those groomers they rant about.

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It's only evil if the message is that you are just fine the way you are. Or if it's about teaching uncomfortable truths about their ancestors and the legacy of discrimination they have left us.

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Alabama. Or as I call it "Good Ol' Number 44."

44th as Best State to Live In. 44th in Education. 44th in Health Care. I'm seeing a pattern.

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Those are weak numbers. Rookie numbers! The numbers of a state that doesn't care if it wins the race to the bottom or not! Loooosers!

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You shouldn't channel Trump. What if your brain got stuck that way?

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I plugged my ears so's my thinkybits don't leak out if they meltify.

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Hank Aaron wore #44 and was from Alabama. Clearly God's handiwork.

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I gotta say Hemant, I’m a little disappointed in you. You had the perfect opportunity to make a dig at Liberty University (where Hugh Freeze used to coach) yet you didn’t even mention that!

Freeze is such a dirtbag that this is hardly noteworthy for Auburn, honestly. The laundry list of shitty things Freeze has done is too long to list, but one thing people might not know is his connection to Michael Oher. Since Oher is back in the news, I think it’s worth pointing out that it might not have been just the Tuohys that took advantage of their association with Oher. Freeze coached Oher in high school and conveniently was offered his first college coaching gig at Ole Miss where Oher attended college. Maybe not noteworthy then, but now it looks mighty suspicious.

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Liberty U is a private school...I'm guessing that's why.

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Yea - I just meant Hemant usually never misses a chance to shit on Liberty U and he could’ve thrown in a little jab about how he did questionable things at Liberty U as well.

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Mr. Freeze: Batman villain.

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Ahhnold!

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How I wish Mr. Freeze had been played by Patrick Stewart. He actually looked by the character. Can you imagine what Stewart could've done with the role?

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Engage!

Make it so!

Mr. Worf, kick Batman's ass!

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If it's a choice between Charles Xavier and the Dark Knight, I'll take the guy in a wheelchair.

(IIRC, there was an issue of Batman during the campy days that had Bruce fighting crime from a wheelchair. Wonder if this was DC taking a shot at the leader from the X-Men)

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See, 𝘤𝘰𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘯 would be if someone were trying to convert good Christian white people to one of those 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘦𝘳 religions. Y'know. The ones run by darkies who don't speak '𝘔𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 like baby Jesus intended! If it's people being converted to Christianity, they're being 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘥.

See? Totally different!

</s>

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