It goes without saying, protecting centuries of church dogma is infinitely more important than protecting children from sexual abuse. To do otherwise, might put some churches out of business and we can't have that because morality.
“Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” – Denis Diderot
Not just tax them, but hold them responsible for criminal activity. Churches should not receive any exceptions to the law, especially exceptions regarding children.
Churchs may as well be taxed. They can now electioneer from the pulpit and their followers can now proselytize in your workplace. Religion everywhere mixed with politics. Our Founders thought they had that problem covered so what could possibly follow? History is full of the horrors of religious wars. Why do we humans insist on reinventing the damn wheel?
I think, in our country's case, it might be more efficient to go the other way 'round- after all, the last king's entrails are substantial enough to handle the last 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 priests.
Appearances are everything. Conformity is everything. Actual suffering is nothing. The proper way for the church to have dealt with this internally would have been to frog-march the kiddie diddler straight to the authorities to repeat his confession on the record for the prosecution. Instead, they covered it up to claim to the outside world that they don't do things like that, and being a Mor(m)on is what makes someone a decent human.
If I see a child being raped, I will do everything I can to stop it. That makes me more moral than their omniscient God, and more moral than LDS leadership.
Consider that any one of these upright Mormon priests could've offered the daughter and granddaughter their home to stay in, away from their rapist father, until they could get self-sufficiently on their feet. They could've done that at any time after the confession and it would've violated no confessional seal. But they didn't.
This "against our religious rules" thing? It's bullflop. They didn't help the victims in ways that were within their own rules. The real truth is they didn't help the victims at all - because helping would've revealed that something was happening and that they knew about it.
And these are the same people who demand that women not use contraception, not get abortions, continue childbearing til their bodies wear out on them... Oh, yeah, they care--about getting more victims.
One of my favorite scenes from Blazing Saddles when Hedley Lamar (Harvey Korman) is signing up thugs for his posse to rape and pillage the people of Rock Ridge to steal their town:
For sure, Brooks did not hold back on his caricatures.
Making light of terrible crimes is considered uncouth for movies now, but we live in a fairly conservative age when it comes to appropriate conversation, triggers, etc. These attitudes have shifted in about a 40-50 year cycle: roaring 20s, then conservative until late 60s-70s, then more conservative in the 80s... So I would not be at all surprised if Gen-Z's kids or grandkids did not take offense as easily as we do today.
And here's the Christian Fucking Privilege. Centuries of church dogma is centuries of church control over the state. The Christian Nazionalists want to bring that back. They don't care about the victims. They don't care how many people are harmed. They want conformity and submission to their authority, and they don't want anyone other than themselves to have any power.
Oh, gee! It would disrupt DOGMA? Golly-winkies! What a tragedy!
PUL-LEASE! These fuckers are so concerned about their own asses that they can't be bothered to consider the REAL victims in all of this: THE KIDS. They'd rather cover their own asses and be forgiven for the unforgivable than to address the genuine elephant in the room: their behavior toward the most vulnerable of their numbers.
Merde ... is it too early in the day to be reaching for the Glenlivet?
Do they really expect people to believe that NO ONE in Brent besides the suspects knew what was going on? Especially when the kids were not living in the bunker? No one knew their kids were being kidnapped and horribly abused?
This sounds horrific if true. And while I’m cynical enough about humans to believe that people would abuse children in this manner I’m also cynical enough about humans to believe law enforcement would make up stories for their own perverse reasons. I’m straining my memory to recall a case from a few years ago of a multi year investigation that ruined a lot of innocent lives until it was proven to be a fabrication of a single deputy. Coerced accusations, coerced confessions, fabricated evidence gradually ensnared a large number of poor and marginalized folk and garnered the deputy a lot of local acclaim until until finally someone was too stubborn to cave in and plead guilty.
Also this from the article:
“Wade said a drug trafficking investigation at the location may have delayed the sex trafficking case.
“We had a little bit of a hold on until we could rescue these children,” the sheriff said.”
Am I reading this right? They waited to rescue the children because the drug investigation took priority?
[bemused smile] I'd suggest the Ticket Office at Severance Hall, sometime when you feel like my homeland is safe enough to visit, but that's another matter.
And I suggest that only because I love that place and the people who make magic in it.
Yeah, I know, and I wish it were otherwise. Just my way of saying that my particular stomping ground ain't ALL bad, and I have this thing about wanting to share those parts that I think are especially enjoyable.
Mindbending bullshit. Kids are just pawns in the church’s power structure. Xtians that incorporate their children into church “culture” are making what amounts to demonic sacrifices. The kids are forced to deal with the lifelong damage they incurred on their own. My disgust runneth over.
Never been a drag queen. Too much of a wallflower for that. But I wouldn't object to giving it a go for an afternoon. Then I am from England, the home of the pantomime queen. And the band Queen, who wanted to break free.
Further Thought: I got to say it: The Seal Of The Confessional™ SHOULD NOT EXIST! This goes for the Catholic Church, evangelical churches, the LDS church, or any other. It amounts to a Get Out of Jail Free card for anyone who commits a crime of any sort, then confesses it to a priest or pastor or any handy man of the cloth. In the case of the LDS church, it's even worse, because as someone else here noted, virtually all adults (or at least MALE adults) of the church hold vested positions as church personnel. As such, NONE OF THEM can theoretically be forced to divulge ANYTHING regarding untoward behavior to a secular authority.
At its extreme, such a practice creates a climate where ANY depredation is permitted, without penalty, and I don't see that as tolerable in any fashion.
I'd argue that it's less 'get out of jail free' and more 'permission to commit any and all crimes' but at the end of the day, that's probably more nit pick than substance.
What I'm reading here is that not only does the Mormon church continue to refuse to discipline its own members, it wants to be sure nobody else disciplines its members, either. How very Catholic of them.
Something I'd like to know is why is it in these cases where a child has been sexually abused, these churches always seem to think they're protecting their faith as a whole. Quite bluntly, if protecting your precious organization, be it a church or something else, requires that a child abuser be allowed to continue their crimes it's well past time to re examine why that is. Why would anyone (okay, outside of a pedophile) want to belong to any group that allowed the sexual abuse of children as a matter of semi-routine? And yet, some attempt to claim these churches are more moral and have better 'family' values than the average, despite what seems to go on behind closed doors all too often.
If your religion needs to be 'saved' by allowing a religious member to continue sexually abusing a child, then your religion is in dire need of dying anyway. There should never be protections under the law for the religious for crimes committed against innocent kids; and the way some churches keep insisting there should be tells the rest of us exactly who and what those religious groups actually are.
The PR firm I worked at promoted the idea of transparency. The sooner you come clean, the less damage to the organization for the issue. If you’re caught, or you catch an employee or CEO or whatever committing a crime, it’s better to have it out in the open with appropriate consequences rather than trying to cover it up. Covering it up suggests to those not directly involved that you condone the crimes and the whole institution is rotten. Holding the guilty individuals accountable says the institution is at the very least trying to be honest . Then you can move on, building safeguards to avoid future lapses. It’s like a sincere apology. It addresses the problem, shows remorse and changes behavior in the future. Everything else is a distraction from your bad behavior.
As one of my cop buddies says, few to no criminals commit a crime expecting to be caught. They cover it up because they sincerely believe the cover-up will work, forever. Even if modern history has shown that's an idiotic assumption, in the moment they probably believe theirs will be the exception.
There's also a personal reason. If you narc now, you will be punished by the organization for sure. If you don't narc now and the crime is eventually found out, you *might* be punished by the organization. You *might* be punished by the cops. Or maybe the organization rewards you for your loyalty and the cops don't care about you as much as the criminal. Future punishment for silence is far, far less certain than the outcome of narcing on your priest.
In Canada we had the "residential school" staining our history, resulting in family separation, torture and death of countless First Nation children, backed primarily by Catholic church and Canadian government of that era. Many of the graves of these children were just found or never found at all.
Growing up in a Baptist church community, we had this young pastor whose eyes and smiles made every teenage girls threw up in their mouths. My friends and I had a pact back then to never let any of us alone with him. We knew that reporting him to adults was useless.
And people wonder why I'm an atheist. Hypocrisy knows no bound - sums up churches for me. Never again.
For some reason it strikes me hardest in the morning when I get up. Our government has been overthrown. All these years we have been leery of the "commies" overthrowing us and it turned out to be the republican bastards that were the threat the whole time. And it is not something that might happen-it HAS happened. It's just a matter of consolidation now. Some people are saying that we will take the country back with the mid term elections. I don't think that is possible. They will change/alter the rules so democrats don't have a fair chance during the elections. Our government-and all the levers that it controls-is gone. I think the only option will be for states to secede and build their own military.
I just watched a video clip in my facebook feed from Texas. A citizen, Samuel Garcia from Abilene, was addressing lawmakers about the redrawn maps giving Trump five more seats, and really let them have it both barrels about the chicanery and the secrecy. He even told them at one point to put their phones down and have the decency to listen to him because he drove three hours to appear.
But what really got to me was his brief mention of another citizen they had arrested for speaking at the lectern too long.
I am very much afraid you are right about the government being already overthrown. I was advised to get a passport in order to be able to vote in the midterms, since my married name does not match my birth certificate name, but by the time the midterms roll around (if they happen at all) I wonder if women will still even have the right to vote, or if there will be some other specious reason I will be turned away at the polls.
There should not be any redrawn maps. The constituency for the President is the whole country. It should be a straight vote count. The electoral college is not fit for purpose. Especially with the origin connected intimately to slavery.
I also think that the President should not be aligned to any political party. And that they definitely should not have a criminal record. And most of all that they are not in thrall to another world leader.
Also, the power grab currently going on with Texas trying to redraw maps is more proof. People want to pretend that the “election” of DT wasn’t really a HOSTILE government take over. It WAS.
Some people have been saying for decades that the threat to US democracy and citizens was internal and that spending trillions of tax $ on external enemies just made the rich richer.
Voting will remain a ritual in the US until the the core corrupt leadership of the democratic party, who work at the behest of the rich and other interest groups - you whistle and I'll point - are removed.
How many times have we heard the cry? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! Well ... was anyone in this story thinking of the kids at all, or were they more concerned about the adults and whether or not someone would go to prison? This is the same brand of ludicrous crap we've read about on this site, more times than I care to count, and the fact that the perpetrators got off and everyone congratulates themselves for no one being technically at fault goes beyond sickening and into a whole new territory.
Once again, I have to say it: absolution for such a "confession" MUST be accompanied by an admission of guilt before a secular authority, because if it isn't justice, especially for the children, will never be done.
The Christian nationalist movement only cares about children when they (MAGAS) can use it as a weapon to attack anyone the MAGAS don’t like or want to remove from those “others” of their Human Rights and civil liberties.
“The bill, well-intentioned as it might have been, would disrupt centuries of church dogma, said Farnsworth, who as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee has the authority to decide which bills to consider.”
Obviously, that is a good thing. We have centuries of cases of this dogma protecting predators, rapists and killers, maybe it is time we stop giving these people deference.
This case illustrates that the idea of confession isn’t really about getting right with god, since he did nothing to correct his behavior, no one followed up to ensure he actually repented, and his character never improved. The idea that at least religion makes one be a good person is a bald faced, big, fat, ugly lie that anyone with eyes should be able to see. He wanted a safe place to brag. He continued to do the same crime despite supposedly being shamed for it, then went out to proudly display his crimes for all the world to see. He wasn’t confessing for assuaging his guilt, he was confessing to get attention.
The idea of confession has been used since its inception to provide the church with leverage. The church has always used it for blackmail, for controlling the masses (tell us what you’ve done wrong and we will make it right) and even for individual temptation for gossip in regards to the clergy who hears it.
The little ways the Mormons take advantage of confession, bishops are just laypeople of a certain standing, not really special clergy trained by the church to be in the positions of authority, men become priests at a certain age, but women are not ever considered worthy of clergy status, so their eleven year old male children are placed in a respected position above their mothers. It’s bad enough that in other denominations bishops get this protection of secrecy, but the Mormon version is just taking advantage of established norms. I still don’t think confession should be so protected, especially when the church doesn’t treat it with the sanctity they claim it possesses, it never has treated it with the sanctity it claims. But when the specific church just hands out these roles to everyone who pays their tithes, it becomes a meaningless position. Then to talk about how this specific instance overstepped their own rules regarding confession, and legal obligations as well, having other people in the discussion, pretending that spiritual guidance by a group of people is the same as private confession is even more ridiculous. If we accept that, then anything said during any church event could be protected as confession and that turns the sacrament of confession into another meaningless position.
Let’s face it, confession is just a means for pervy men to get off on telling each other what nasty things they say and do to hurt women and children without consequences, and to control the women and children.
Our freedom of religion is under attack in so many forms, but this isn’t one of them. Expecting the people who claim moral superiority to actually be moral isn’t an attack on faith, it’s just common sense. But forming a police force to protect religious sensibilities, specifically Christian sensibilities, is absolutely a violation of our freedoms.
Since its inception, the LDS church has shrouded itself and its ceremonies in secrecy (Joseph Smith was a Freemason). Its governing body is made up of twelve old white men - women need not apply - who in turn are led by a president who is considered a prophet. IMO these leaders likely knew of this abuse case and kept it internal. The predatory father and complicit mother were given prison sentences. Why didn't the prosecutions extend to those involved in the cover-up of child sexual abuse? For these image-conscious "churches" that want to keep the outside world from knowing what's really going on, I'd say that sunlight is still the best disinfectant.
Any bureaucracy eventually becomes self-serving. The Mormons have a long history of child abuse - that is what I call forcing girls into child marriage. But also by throwing boys out of the fold because there are not enough girls to go round. What would you expect from a religion made up out of whole cloth by a sexual predator.
Not to mention those boys who get thrown out because they had the bad judgment to be gay or trans. As I understand it, such kids make up a significant portion of the homeless in places like Salt Lake City, and I alternate between being boggled and FURIOUS at that state of affairs.
Why not have a woman with multiple husbands then? I think the last line of your comment sums up exactly why not.
It is like what you would expect from a religion made up from a boast that you can make more money from religion than writing. A religion obsessed by money.
Even ones like Christianity, where Paul made it quite clear that there should be no priesthood at all. They used to get round that one because only the priests had bibles and they were written in dead languages only they knew, just in case a bible got out into the wild.
As someone who belongs to a five-generation Mormon family (but who dropped her affiliation decades ago), I have to say this does not surprise me one bit. The church has whole throngs of lawyers on its payroll to fight these charges up, down, and sideways. The stories are in the news all the time, but the church owns a pretty good chunk of the local media (radio, TV, The Deseret News), and you can bet they're not about to report on any of this. Oh, and by the way--there's a supermajority of Mormon Republicans in the Utah Legislature. This is what we non-believers are up against.
Religious organizations aways, always ALWAYS protect their power instead of the well-being of people, ALWAYS protect their authority instead of acknowledging reality, ALWAYS defend their reputation instead of reforming their behavior, etc.
If these were victimless crimes, it would be comical to watch the constant projection of xtian criminals but there are victims, lots of them and the crime spree stretches for thousands of miles across millennia and the pile of bodies is immense.
It goes without saying, protecting centuries of church dogma is infinitely more important than protecting children from sexual abuse. To do otherwise, might put some churches out of business and we can't have that because morality.
“Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” – Denis Diderot
Tax all churches.
Not just tax them, but hold them responsible for criminal activity. Churches should not receive any exceptions to the law, especially exceptions regarding children.
And you thought the Catholic church was bad!
Well yes, of course accountability. Taxing them flanks them. And personally, I hope ends them over time.
Churchs may as well be taxed. They can now electioneer from the pulpit and their followers can now proselytize in your workplace. Religion everywhere mixed with politics. Our Founders thought they had that problem covered so what could possibly follow? History is full of the horrors of religious wars. Why do we humans insist on reinventing the damn wheel?
Back taxes due too since their exemption occurred.
Diderot,but I’m only on my first cuppa, and so must be forgiven. it’s right there in my copy of thr Book of Moron.
You are quite right. I will fix it.
I think, in our country's case, it might be more efficient to go the other way 'round- after all, the last king's entrails are substantial enough to handle the last 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 priests.
Truly one of the best quotes I've ever heard!
Even better, when you realize he said it back in the 18th century.
𝐼𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒’𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝐷𝑆 𝐶ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒.
Appearances are everything. Conformity is everything. Actual suffering is nothing. The proper way for the church to have dealt with this internally would have been to frog-march the kiddie diddler straight to the authorities to repeat his confession on the record for the prosecution. Instead, they covered it up to claim to the outside world that they don't do things like that, and being a Mor(m)on is what makes someone a decent human.
If I see a child being raped, I will do everything I can to stop it. That makes me more moral than their omniscient God, and more moral than LDS leadership.
I find I have to cite that sharp young woman again:
𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑 𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑛 𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑠, “𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒, 𝐼’𝑚 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑦𝑜𝑢.” 𝐼𝑓 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑎 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑, 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝐺𝑜𝑑.
-- Tracie Harris
For sure appearances is everything.
Consider that any one of these upright Mormon priests could've offered the daughter and granddaughter their home to stay in, away from their rapist father, until they could get self-sufficiently on their feet. They could've done that at any time after the confession and it would've violated no confessional seal. But they didn't.
This "against our religious rules" thing? It's bullflop. They didn't help the victims in ways that were within their own rules. The real truth is they didn't help the victims at all - because helping would've revealed that something was happening and that they knew about it.
It is stunning to me how little they care about children.
And these are the same people who demand that women not use contraception, not get abortions, continue childbearing til their bodies wear out on them... Oh, yeah, they care--about getting more victims.
More likely, the priests would just prey on them further, having already heard the sales pitch from their evil-as-fuck parent.
The Mormon guys in Vietnam always had the nastiest porn.
One of my favorite scenes from Blazing Saddles when Hedley Lamar (Harvey Korman) is signing up thugs for his posse to rape and pillage the people of Rock Ridge to steal their town:
"
Next.What are your qualifications?
Rape.Arson. Murder. Rape.
You said Rape twice?
I like Rape.
Kinky! Give him a badge!
"
That was one of the bits of dialogue that was cringeworthy even in 1974.
Cringeworthy, yes. But a case where movie satire and sarcasm hold up a mirror to real life.
Prescient.
For sure, Brooks did not hold back on his caricatures.
Making light of terrible crimes is considered uncouth for movies now, but we live in a fairly conservative age when it comes to appropriate conversation, triggers, etc. These attitudes have shifted in about a 40-50 year cycle: roaring 20s, then conservative until late 60s-70s, then more conservative in the 80s... So I would not be at all surprised if Gen-Z's kids or grandkids did not take offense as easily as we do today.
𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙, 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙-𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛, 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑟𝑢𝑝𝑡 𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑑𝑜𝑔𝑚𝑎, 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝐹𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑠𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ, 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑎𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑒𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝐽𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟.
And here's the Christian Fucking Privilege. Centuries of church dogma is centuries of church control over the state. The Christian Nazionalists want to bring that back. They don't care about the victims. They don't care how many people are harmed. They want conformity and submission to their authority, and they don't want anyone other than themselves to have any power.
Oh, gee! It would disrupt DOGMA? Golly-winkies! What a tragedy!
PUL-LEASE! These fuckers are so concerned about their own asses that they can't be bothered to consider the REAL victims in all of this: THE KIDS. They'd rather cover their own asses and be forgiven for the unforgivable than to address the genuine elephant in the room: their behavior toward the most vulnerable of their numbers.
Merde ... is it too early in the day to be reaching for the Glenlivet?
It's 5 o'clock somewhere....
Oh yea it's 5 am HERE! you're fine.
It's always 4:20 at my house.
You too, Donrox? My clock seems to be stuck in that position.
Clock battery died at 4:20 and you found no reason to put it a new one.
A stopped clock is always right in this case. 😀
You swore in French. You can use French time. It's 2:44 pm.
Merci bien, mon ami !
Pas de souci, ma belle ;)
On se retrouve plus tard pour une bonne bouteille et du pain français ?
*Raise her glass of water and note to buy a baguette*
Is that what I said? 😂
Une suggestion des plus louables !
Think of it as still a very late yesterday.
Have a drink for me. I have to wait until after work.
> "is it too early in the day...."
You can't drink all day if you don't start early.
Roll one on me.
Something “consciousness changing” is definitely called for. Fuck Dogma.
OT, but related...
"Seven charged in child sex ring run out of Alabama concrete bunker, sheriff says"
nbcnews.com/news/us-news/seven-charged-child-sex-ring-run-alabama-concrete-bunker-sheriff-says-rcna221191
Alabama, tied with Mississippi as the most religious state in the country. I'm betting all the suspects are Christians.
Was there a pizzeria above ?
and republican.
As of last year, Brent had a population of 4,074.
Do they really expect people to believe that NO ONE in Brent besides the suspects knew what was going on? Especially when the kids were not living in the bunker? No one knew their kids were being kidnapped and horribly abused?
They knew.
You have to be sub-human to be involved in something so repugnant. I’m gobsmacked by the inhumanity of men.
I suspect a goodly number of the population made visits. Parents were paid for their silence.
Involvement of at least one nearby megachurch pastor, Republican politician, or high-ranking law enforcement officer 𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘥.
Or, let's face it, this is Alabama- it could just as well be all of the above in the same damn person.
I can’t believe how horrible that story is. We have lost our humanity.
This sounds horrific if true. And while I’m cynical enough about humans to believe that people would abuse children in this manner I’m also cynical enough about humans to believe law enforcement would make up stories for their own perverse reasons. I’m straining my memory to recall a case from a few years ago of a multi year investigation that ruined a lot of innocent lives until it was proven to be a fabrication of a single deputy. Coerced accusations, coerced confessions, fabricated evidence gradually ensnared a large number of poor and marginalized folk and garnered the deputy a lot of local acclaim until until finally someone was too stubborn to cave in and plead guilty.
Also this from the article:
“Wade said a drug trafficking investigation at the location may have delayed the sex trafficking case.
“We had a little bit of a hold on until we could rescue these children,” the sheriff said.”
Am I reading this right? They waited to rescue the children because the drug investigation took priority?
"The perpetrator admitted his abuse and crimes to his Mormon Church, and received counseling for his crimes."
and the children received no counseling for the trauma or justice for the crimes committed against them.
Forgiveness for the adults overrides the trauma and suffering of the victims. If this is justice, I'm a concert violinist!
*Looks where to buy a ticket*
[bemused smile] I'd suggest the Ticket Office at Severance Hall, sometime when you feel like my homeland is safe enough to visit, but that's another matter.
And I suggest that only because I love that place and the people who make magic in it.
What do you think will happen first ? A frozen Venus or the 2nd amendment being respected as it was originally written ?
Edit : the legalized murder of women and girls called dobbs is another reason.
Yeah, I know, and I wish it were otherwise. Just my way of saying that my particular stomping ground ain't ALL bad, and I have this thing about wanting to share those parts that I think are especially enjoyable.
There is a lot of good things to see and experience in China and Iran too. Yet, I won't set foot there.
Frozen Venus!
And Jesus, he wants to go to Venus
Leave Levon far behind
Good way for the hets to get frostbite in a very sensitive place.
Mindbending bullshit. Kids are just pawns in the church’s power structure. Xtians that incorporate their children into church “culture” are making what amounts to demonic sacrifices. The kids are forced to deal with the lifelong damage they incurred on their own. My disgust runneth over.
No drag queens involved. Imagine that. Guess we know who the truly moral ones are.
Never been a drag queen. Too much of a wallflower for that. But I wouldn't object to giving it a go for an afternoon. Then I am from England, the home of the pantomime queen. And the band Queen, who wanted to break free.
😋
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_in_France
AGAIN no drag queens? Man, you'd think a pattern was forming here!
It's like all of us expect it to not be a drag queen.
Amazing, isn’t it?
Distraction distraction distraction…it was never about drag queens, was it?
Further Thought: I got to say it: The Seal Of The Confessional™ SHOULD NOT EXIST! This goes for the Catholic Church, evangelical churches, the LDS church, or any other. It amounts to a Get Out of Jail Free card for anyone who commits a crime of any sort, then confesses it to a priest or pastor or any handy man of the cloth. In the case of the LDS church, it's even worse, because as someone else here noted, virtually all adults (or at least MALE adults) of the church hold vested positions as church personnel. As such, NONE OF THEM can theoretically be forced to divulge ANYTHING regarding untoward behavior to a secular authority.
At its extreme, such a practice creates a climate where ANY depredation is permitted, without penalty, and I don't see that as tolerable in any fashion.
I'd argue that it's less 'get out of jail free' and more 'permission to commit any and all crimes' but at the end of the day, that's probably more nit pick than substance.
What I'm reading here is that not only does the Mormon church continue to refuse to discipline its own members, it wants to be sure nobody else disciplines its members, either. How very Catholic of them.
Something I'd like to know is why is it in these cases where a child has been sexually abused, these churches always seem to think they're protecting their faith as a whole. Quite bluntly, if protecting your precious organization, be it a church or something else, requires that a child abuser be allowed to continue their crimes it's well past time to re examine why that is. Why would anyone (okay, outside of a pedophile) want to belong to any group that allowed the sexual abuse of children as a matter of semi-routine? And yet, some attempt to claim these churches are more moral and have better 'family' values than the average, despite what seems to go on behind closed doors all too often.
If your religion needs to be 'saved' by allowing a religious member to continue sexually abusing a child, then your religion is in dire need of dying anyway. There should never be protections under the law for the religious for crimes committed against innocent kids; and the way some churches keep insisting there should be tells the rest of us exactly who and what those religious groups actually are.
The PR firm I worked at promoted the idea of transparency. The sooner you come clean, the less damage to the organization for the issue. If you’re caught, or you catch an employee or CEO or whatever committing a crime, it’s better to have it out in the open with appropriate consequences rather than trying to cover it up. Covering it up suggests to those not directly involved that you condone the crimes and the whole institution is rotten. Holding the guilty individuals accountable says the institution is at the very least trying to be honest . Then you can move on, building safeguards to avoid future lapses. It’s like a sincere apology. It addresses the problem, shows remorse and changes behavior in the future. Everything else is a distraction from your bad behavior.
As one of my cop buddies says, few to no criminals commit a crime expecting to be caught. They cover it up because they sincerely believe the cover-up will work, forever. Even if modern history has shown that's an idiotic assumption, in the moment they probably believe theirs will be the exception.
There's also a personal reason. If you narc now, you will be punished by the organization for sure. If you don't narc now and the crime is eventually found out, you *might* be punished by the organization. You *might* be punished by the cops. Or maybe the organization rewards you for your loyalty and the cops don't care about you as much as the criminal. Future punishment for silence is far, far less certain than the outcome of narcing on your priest.
In Canada we had the "residential school" staining our history, resulting in family separation, torture and death of countless First Nation children, backed primarily by Catholic church and Canadian government of that era. Many of the graves of these children were just found or never found at all.
Growing up in a Baptist church community, we had this young pastor whose eyes and smiles made every teenage girls threw up in their mouths. My friends and I had a pact back then to never let any of us alone with him. We knew that reporting him to adults was useless.
And people wonder why I'm an atheist. Hypocrisy knows no bound - sums up churches for me. Never again.
For some reason it strikes me hardest in the morning when I get up. Our government has been overthrown. All these years we have been leery of the "commies" overthrowing us and it turned out to be the republican bastards that were the threat the whole time. And it is not something that might happen-it HAS happened. It's just a matter of consolidation now. Some people are saying that we will take the country back with the mid term elections. I don't think that is possible. They will change/alter the rules so democrats don't have a fair chance during the elections. Our government-and all the levers that it controls-is gone. I think the only option will be for states to secede and build their own military.
I just watched a video clip in my facebook feed from Texas. A citizen, Samuel Garcia from Abilene, was addressing lawmakers about the redrawn maps giving Trump five more seats, and really let them have it both barrels about the chicanery and the secrecy. He even told them at one point to put their phones down and have the decency to listen to him because he drove three hours to appear.
But what really got to me was his brief mention of another citizen they had arrested for speaking at the lectern too long.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=723538013915856
I am very much afraid you are right about the government being already overthrown. I was advised to get a passport in order to be able to vote in the midterms, since my married name does not match my birth certificate name, but by the time the midterms roll around (if they happen at all) I wonder if women will still even have the right to vote, or if there will be some other specious reason I will be turned away at the polls.
There should not be any redrawn maps. The constituency for the President is the whole country. It should be a straight vote count. The electoral college is not fit for purpose. Especially with the origin connected intimately to slavery.
I also think that the President should not be aligned to any political party. And that they definitely should not have a criminal record. And most of all that they are not in thrall to another world leader.
If we are allowed to vote, I will never have confidence in a system that fraudulently elected Shitler.
The whole commie this and that circus was a diversion.
Also, the power grab currently going on with Texas trying to redraw maps is more proof. People want to pretend that the “election” of DT wasn’t really a HOSTILE government take over. It WAS.
Not only that, but the threat originated in the country that WAS Communism. But has now gone full circle to extreme right wing.
Putin must be laughing every day at what he set in motion.
He was pretty damn successful, eh?
He could have done it without the very willing PAB in the White House.
AAACK...I meant COULDN'T have done it.
Too early in the morning for me, after a sleepless night.
That makes a lot more sense.
Some people have been saying for decades that the threat to US democracy and citizens was internal and that spending trillions of tax $ on external enemies just made the rich richer.
Voting will remain a ritual in the US until the the core corrupt leadership of the democratic party, who work at the behest of the rich and other interest groups - you whistle and I'll point - are removed.
And the muthafuckin Corrupt Supreme 6…how do we get anything done with those morons?
The ultimate corruption! Worse than Dear Leader. That alone will do us in
I share many of those same thoughts with you.
How many times have we heard the cry? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! Well ... was anyone in this story thinking of the kids at all, or were they more concerned about the adults and whether or not someone would go to prison? This is the same brand of ludicrous crap we've read about on this site, more times than I care to count, and the fact that the perpetrators got off and everyone congratulates themselves for no one being technically at fault goes beyond sickening and into a whole new territory.
Once again, I have to say it: absolution for such a "confession" MUST be accompanied by an admission of guilt before a secular authority, because if it isn't justice, especially for the children, will never be done.
The children they are thinking of are the man-babies crying over losing their iron grip on power.
At least one of them was thinking too much about the children.
The Christian nationalist movement only cares about children when they (MAGAS) can use it as a weapon to attack anyone the MAGAS don’t like or want to remove from those “others” of their Human Rights and civil liberties.
"THINK OF THE CHILDREN" is only ever used to take rights away from people they don't like.
People who actually think of the children are too busy listing the crimes against children for slogans.
“The bill, well-intentioned as it might have been, would disrupt centuries of church dogma, said Farnsworth, who as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee has the authority to decide which bills to consider.”
Obviously, that is a good thing. We have centuries of cases of this dogma protecting predators, rapists and killers, maybe it is time we stop giving these people deference.
This case illustrates that the idea of confession isn’t really about getting right with god, since he did nothing to correct his behavior, no one followed up to ensure he actually repented, and his character never improved. The idea that at least religion makes one be a good person is a bald faced, big, fat, ugly lie that anyone with eyes should be able to see. He wanted a safe place to brag. He continued to do the same crime despite supposedly being shamed for it, then went out to proudly display his crimes for all the world to see. He wasn’t confessing for assuaging his guilt, he was confessing to get attention.
The idea of confession has been used since its inception to provide the church with leverage. The church has always used it for blackmail, for controlling the masses (tell us what you’ve done wrong and we will make it right) and even for individual temptation for gossip in regards to the clergy who hears it.
The little ways the Mormons take advantage of confession, bishops are just laypeople of a certain standing, not really special clergy trained by the church to be in the positions of authority, men become priests at a certain age, but women are not ever considered worthy of clergy status, so their eleven year old male children are placed in a respected position above their mothers. It’s bad enough that in other denominations bishops get this protection of secrecy, but the Mormon version is just taking advantage of established norms. I still don’t think confession should be so protected, especially when the church doesn’t treat it with the sanctity they claim it possesses, it never has treated it with the sanctity it claims. But when the specific church just hands out these roles to everyone who pays their tithes, it becomes a meaningless position. Then to talk about how this specific instance overstepped their own rules regarding confession, and legal obligations as well, having other people in the discussion, pretending that spiritual guidance by a group of people is the same as private confession is even more ridiculous. If we accept that, then anything said during any church event could be protected as confession and that turns the sacrament of confession into another meaningless position.
Let’s face it, confession is just a means for pervy men to get off on telling each other what nasty things they say and do to hurt women and children without consequences, and to control the women and children.
Our freedom of religion is under attack in so many forms, but this isn’t one of them. Expecting the people who claim moral superiority to actually be moral isn’t an attack on faith, it’s just common sense. But forming a police force to protect religious sensibilities, specifically Christian sensibilities, is absolutely a violation of our freedoms.
Rant off.
Since its inception, the LDS church has shrouded itself and its ceremonies in secrecy (Joseph Smith was a Freemason). Its governing body is made up of twelve old white men - women need not apply - who in turn are led by a president who is considered a prophet. IMO these leaders likely knew of this abuse case and kept it internal. The predatory father and complicit mother were given prison sentences. Why didn't the prosecutions extend to those involved in the cover-up of child sexual abuse? For these image-conscious "churches" that want to keep the outside world from knowing what's really going on, I'd say that sunlight is still the best disinfectant.
Any bureaucracy eventually becomes self-serving. The Mormons have a long history of child abuse - that is what I call forcing girls into child marriage. But also by throwing boys out of the fold because there are not enough girls to go round. What would you expect from a religion made up out of whole cloth by a sexual predator.
Not to mention those boys who get thrown out because they had the bad judgment to be gay or trans. As I understand it, such kids make up a significant portion of the homeless in places like Salt Lake City, and I alternate between being boggled and FURIOUS at that state of affairs.
Quite a few porn stars seem to come from there too.
Why not have a woman with multiple husbands then? I think the last line of your comment sums up exactly why not.
It is like what you would expect from a religion made up from a boast that you can make more money from religion than writing. A religion obsessed by money.
If you want a good history of the Mormons, It is hard to beat David Fitzgerald's 'The Mormons'.
All religions are made up fairytale’s designed to keep the clergy in power and in control!
Even ones like Christianity, where Paul made it quite clear that there should be no priesthood at all. They used to get round that one because only the priests had bibles and they were written in dead languages only they knew, just in case a bible got out into the wild.
Don't tell me the pure christian churches adopted another Pagan practice while swearing they invented it.
As someone who belongs to a five-generation Mormon family (but who dropped her affiliation decades ago), I have to say this does not surprise me one bit. The church has whole throngs of lawyers on its payroll to fight these charges up, down, and sideways. The stories are in the news all the time, but the church owns a pretty good chunk of the local media (radio, TV, The Deseret News), and you can bet they're not about to report on any of this. Oh, and by the way--there's a supermajority of Mormon Republicans in the Utah Legislature. This is what we non-believers are up against.
Religious organizations aways, always ALWAYS protect their power instead of the well-being of people, ALWAYS protect their authority instead of acknowledging reality, ALWAYS defend their reputation instead of reforming their behavior, etc.
And they will never, never, NEVER change.
Starve them into extinction.
If these were victimless crimes, it would be comical to watch the constant projection of xtian criminals but there are victims, lots of them and the crime spree stretches for thousands of miles across millennia and the pile of bodies is immense.
The whole of Mt. Everest couldn't cover that mass grave.