It has gotten to the point where these things are more expected than shocking. At least the victims are being listened to and believed at long last. I can only wonder about the countless cases of sexual assault that went unreported, or were never prosecuted over the years, thanks to Christian privilege. His MAGA hat is also revealing. The preachers warned of the anti-Christ for centuries, then when he showed up, they voted for him. That the evangelicals can support such a grotesquely immoral man, is all you need to know about what their morals amount to in practice.
Now we are getting somewhere! I think as soon as we get free of t RUMP a presidential crime commission, that we the people demand!, should be formed to investigate those in power that allowed a multiple felony charged individual to run for the most important office perhaps in the entire world!
Wish we could have known about all this shit back in the 90's, when they first started crowing about "family values." We even had a functional court system back then. I don't know if things still would have gotten this far or not. They still had their Lee Atwater teaching them the value of dirty tricks, the Heritage Foundation was in its heyday, and FOX was already in full swing, but having this information put in front of the religious folk a couple of decades before they were MAGAtized...would it have headed off the madness that was come, or merely delayed it?
At very least, people would have had something weighty to throw at the Moral Majority crowd whenever they started blathering about morals and ethics.
A popular bumper sticker from that time period was "The Moral Majority Is Neither." I had one displayed on my fridge with a fridge magnet. I wanted to put it on my car, but the previous time I had put an anti-conservative bumper sticker on it, I discovered about a week later that someone had keyed it on both sides.
I guess that was one of the harbingers of the nastiness to come. When I look back, I remember quite a few scary or outrageous episodes that later turned out to be the first fetid hints of the slowly gathering shitstorm that now engulfs the entire country.
Sadly churches have been enabling sexual abuse for centuries. I think things would have been no better than now in the 90s. But it's worse now in one important way: the Internet has enabled these freaks to get away with abusing much larger numbers of children because it's not just the kids in their own church anymore 😞.
Everyone was reeling from the Satanic Panic and putting warning labels on music (thanks, Tipper) to pay attention to the shenanigans happening in the churches and isolated homes following those woodshed cannons of child rearing; plus ppl didn’t have nanny cams & kids didn’t have cellphones
We also needed to learn better vocabularies to describe the behavior, which took another generation or so, and is still difficult (or impossible) for so many kids.
This is why it has always been “dangerous” to have so many *books* available in libraries and online.
I mean, *outside of approved sources* of information have been resisted by every institution religious or otherwise since the beginning, right?
Yep. It's always been the babble, God's holey word as the one and only source of knowledge and wisdom for the flocks. Holding up the cobbled-together scribblings of dubious authorship as the font of all wisdom for the modern world, a world that doesn't even remotely resemble the tribal sheep-herding culture that plagiarized er, produced it, has always been their schtick.
I can remember when I believed this without question. The absurdity was staring me right in the face and I couldn't see it until long after I had reached adulthood. I was so thoroughly brainwashed in the Blood of the Lamb it disturbed me when anyone challenged its veracity.
Y'know, seeing where this is going, be it community or polls, there's honestly this time many more in this country that have sense enough not to vote for the guy; not forgetful of his first term and even worse should he have won.
So whereas to disagree is an obvious half and half here, alongside us, does it already show that she's going to win. The ignorance is definite, as well as seen, people like this man to only further prove that point, and most of all, where Kamala is mentally. Whereas idiocy is something, it's where it should be. So we'll see who gives us a country again since Biden was already in use of the broom and dustpan, I suppose.
Whoop-dee-fuckin'-doo, won’t you believe it? Another one of these cases.
It’s not gay people or trans people or drag queens that we should be scared of, it’s the 'family values' crowd that are actually coming to groom your kids.
The more typical it is, the more Kamala's polls continue to stand out. Because she's lightin' the guy up right now. And with looming wonders if dementia is making itself known with Trump, it's clear where it isn't fit.
You mean the church's , pastors and the counselors that think they are buying off their sins because of being under a roof of a tax exempt business .......that they think gives them freedom to rape children . Time to tax church's
Youth pastor type does horrible youth pastor things. Gets caught. Church makes one statement to the general public saying "See! We did the right thing and fired him and cooperated with the cops, not like those dirty Catholics!" While proceding to memory hole and unperson the criminal from what the congregation knows. The coverup is still happening. They don't actually care about the real victims, just their fake victim: the reputation of the church.
I liked their page. It's a step up from the memory hole "web page? What web page? We don't know what you're talking about, there was never anything here. Move along now."
But yes, I agree, the church will likely not change anything about their internal practices. They may acknowledge it happened, but they seem intent on not learning anything from it.
Almost heaved up my breakfast looking at that last pic of the child rapist with the red hat of Satan on his head and the adjudicated rapist on his shirt.
Author of the book "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret"
However, the mature topics in Blume's books have generated criticism[12][13] and controversy.[11][13] The ALA has named Blume as one of the most frequently challenged authors of the 21st century.
Which reminds me, I tried to check it out a while ago when the movie came out, but it was unavailable. I'm sure I've read it, I just don't remember any of it. I'll probably head to the library in a bit and if I can see the line isn't too long, go vote on my way over.
I began reading it to see what the fuss was all about but gave up at chapter 5. It seems the book is much better suited to a tween than a retiree, so I was kind of bored.
And yet that goober of a pastor titled his "sermon" after a catchphrase famously connected with Bianca del Rio, a highly successful drag artist. The Christianists truly cannot help themselves, can they; they're just fascinated.
Religion and churches are about power, Trump is about power. People who want to use power to transgress are drawn to these. Committing sexual crimes against children is just one of the transgressions they seek to commit. Having followers who are taught to obey arbitrary and contradictory things just makes it easier to commit crimes. The Venn diagram of Trump believers and people who follow instruction from the invisible sky dude show nearly complete overlap. Those that fall outside it, are planning on taking advantage of those within.
Power with controlling fear. Fear that one winds up in some fictitious place being burned and tortured forever for not believing in some invisible creator. That does nothing to prevent the horrific suffering and death of its creations.
If you want to really get me pissed off, you can be a Christian and tell me about how you want to "proclaim the truth in love." no truth, certainly no love, but lots and lots and lots of proclaiming.
Oh yes, let's get back to proclaiming the truth in love. I sent this to Smilin' Al Mohler a few years ago. It applies to these molester protectors, BECAUSE I DON'T BELIEVE FOR A SINGLE GODDAM MINUTE THAT THIS IS NOTWHAT THEY'RE DOING, AND THAT NO ONE KNEW ABOUT THIS UNTIL JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO.
not to mention, little Zach himself producing this garbage, and then showing up to preach..
-------------------------------
I must be stupid, because I just don't understand "proclaiming the truth in love", certainly not as Iunderstand words like "truth" and "love".
Here you are complaining of all of this bad behavior by HETEROSEXUALS, and you are upset because two men or two women WANT to make the commitment to each other that you deem so important that not making and keeping it is causing the decline of our culture?
I have gay coupled friends that have been together for longer than all seven of Newt Gingrich's or Rush Limbaugh's marriages combined. I know of at least one couple where you could throw in Liz Taylor's 8 marriages in addition, and they have still been together longer. I saw many men-- myself included-- care for their sick partners and boyfriends 30 years ago as they were dying, while their families and churches abandoned them, just like Jesus would have, I'm sure. Straight people abandon their families and children for no other reason than convenience, as you so rightly observe. A fatal disease would hardly keep them around, would it?
And we're the problem?
And you tell us you love us? Do you love us when you blame us for the state of heterosexual marriage and family, conflating our lives and our right to live our lives after the fashion that nature has made us, with the child abuse, child molestation, and partner abuse of the HETERO world, where REAL people are hurt and harmed, not the fabricated hurt and harm that gay people are accused of causing just by existing? Do you love us when you call our lives abominations, dangerous, filthy, disease, perverted and sick, on the basis of what you prefer to believe, rather than the facts of our lives? Did you actually ever talk to gay people whose lives have not been hurt and harmed by the self-hatred you preach?
Exactly how much to you love us when you oppose everything we try to do to live our lives peacefully and happily, with the same fulfillment you would expect for yourself? Exactly how much do you love us when you join political campaigns that attempt to demonize us, lying,propagandizing, fear mongering, calling us a threat to marriage, family, children, freedom, faith, liberty, and the whole of Western civilization, such as it is? Do you truly love us when you seek to disadvantage us legally in every way that you can, to make our lives as difficult and unpleasant as possible, to impose your religious beliefs upon people who most vehemently do not share them? Is it your "love" that makes that OK? I can just feel the love there, although I must confess I would probably prefer being hated, it being a tad more honest.
And then you have THIS little gem. "We also need to be willing to take the hit of "being judgmental" by continuing to proclaim the truth in love. Often, people mistake the judgment of God as us judging them." We gay people need controlling. We gay people need YOUR moral guidance. After all, we are barbarians, aren’t we? We gay people are moral and social children that must be supervised by the all-knowing and morally superior. We’re too immature, too wrapped in the coils of lust and sin to know anything about our lives, our sexuality, our faith, our loves, or our families.
I call shenanigans! Very frankly, I have never met, talked to, or debated any faith based opponent of my right live my life as I see fit, without the burden of your animus-disguised-as-love, who knew the first thing about human sexuality in general or gay people in particular. And as for knowing what the bible says about homosexuality, a word that did not appear in it until 1948? Don’t get me started.
You want to believe you love me? Wonderful,but don't expect me to buy it. You are in fact judging, as much as you would like to pretend that you are not. As a gay man, I have yet to hear anyone proclaiming the truth in love about gay people without making being gay the extra special-icky sin that they so fervently want it to be. Are you really god's Best Buddy, that he keeps you informed of all of his thoughts? I don't think so.
I don't think I am mistaking the judgment of God for you judging other people. I've got eyes and ears and brains, and besides...I don't hear God talking, I only hear YOU talking. Proclaiming the truth in love? I'm sorry to inform you, but this isn't love, it's narcissism.
I’m almost certain that Jesus was speaking to you in a number of places. So I’ll proclaim the truth in love to YOU—something about not being concerned with the sins of others until you yourself have achieved a bit of perfection.“Judge not lest ye be judged.” That doesn’t mean that you rub your hands with glee at the thought of God is judging people exactly as you would, were you God, which you aren't. “Look not for the speck in your bothers eye” because you have one big ol’ log in your own, starting with the belief that you really aren’t judging anybody, your just spreading “the truth in love”.“Let him among you…” Well, everyone might be a sinner, but not everyone is throwing stones.
Exactly what part of what The Lord had to say does not apply to a bible-believing Christian such as yourself?
I’ll leave you with this thought. There are plenty of Christians, and plenty of Christian denominations, which no longer buy the myths about gay people and god that you people are so happy to repeat, all in the name of proclaiming the truth in love. I’m not a homosexual, an abomination, a problem, or any particular kind of sinner, and if I am, you have your own sins to keep you busy. I’m certainly not a threat to you, your family, your children, or your faith, unless the whole of Christianity boils down to “get the homos by proclaiming the truth in love.”
I won’t tell you if I am a Christian. But I will tell YOU, pastor, that YOU do not know my relationship with God. You do not represent God, and until I hear it from god himself, you do not speak for God. No one has given YOU any authority to judge others. The problem here is simple: you have chosen judgment over God, no matter if you would prefer to call it “proclaiming the truth in love”, or admitting it for what it so clearly is. God gives us a choice: self-righteousness or Him. When you make the wrong choice, choosing moralizing judgmentalism as so many of you have done, I can only suggest that you repent and find your lord before it’s too late.
Not enough and too many. Not enough in that we need fewer of those superstitious control freaks, too many in that way too many people died from the botched response of Dear Leader.
Here we go again. Pastor [possibly youth pastor] = sexual abuser. And I have to say, scrolling down to see the MAGA hat and the Trump T-shirt was no surprise at all. It's getting to the point where headlines like this are becoming routine.
From the Oakwood Church disclaimer: "The safety and protection of the individuals in our church is what is paramount to us. We are devoted to doing what we can for the care of the victims of these crimes."
Please DON'T provide "pastoral counseling" soaked in your misogynistic, male-authoritarian theology, the utter crap that enabled the perp to manipulate his victims and stay above suspicion for so long.
Just pay for SECULAR counseling from licensed providers trained in the latest evidence-based modalities.
"Pastoral counseling" is a lie. It is nothing more than pounding more "jesus allows this" into a kid's head. Along with a huge dose of "you are going to hell forever" because you reported this.
"The safety and protection of the individuals in our church is what is paramount to us. We are devoted to doing what we can for the care of the victims of these crimes."
It is truly a shame that we cannot find these people before they are able to abuse kids - or anyone else. I have believed for years that this occurs in right-wing christianist families because of authoritarian parents and extreme, puritanical takes on sex within these families. Abused kids have the potential to become abusing adults.
100% agree. Finding the Zachs before they harm kids is good. Preventing the Franks from creating the Zachs is better.
Most of that will have to be cultural as you can't criminalize most aspects of malicious or incompetent parenting. But we could at least criminalize parental physical abuse such as hitting, starving, and otherwise torturing your own kids, with no exceptions given for religion or other parental ideology.
Everybody has a potential to become an abuser. Most people still don't become an abuser of kids or anyone at all. If you want me to believe that this is more common for abused kids than for not abused kids, you have to show me the stats.
I’m so tired of this shit. My son is gay and demonized, while it’s always coming from in the house. Organized religion needs to get itself together and stop bearing false witness.
They desperately need to do what Jesus mentioned in Matthew 7:5 and first remove the plank/log/beam from their own eyes before even trying to remove the speck/splinter/mote from the eye of another.
They 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 to do as 'ol JC commanded them to and go practice their religion in the closet where nobody can hear them, and stop trying to stuff us into it instead.
(Lots of Marvel-related birthdays today. "Hulk" director Ang Lee turns 70. Sam Raimi (director of "Spider-Man") is also 65. And everybody's favorite Merc With a Mouth Ryan "Deadpool" Reynolds celebrates birthday number 48).
Speaking of hot men, the tech who just came for the semi-annual HVAC check-up was really cute. I swear one of these days I'm going to get up the courage to compliment these guys.
I’ve decided since 2016 that I’m not risking my vote not being counted on some complaint that it doesn’t count because it was early voting. Day of is the only way to go.
Not only that... I want to be 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 voting, and I mean to bluntly inform anyone who asks exactly how I'm casting my vote and why. Not a particularly dangerous thing to do in a solidly blue district, but if there are any dipshits planning on letting Stein or any other spoiler asshat use their ballot for toilet paper, I want them to at 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 be horribly fucking embarrassed about it.
I spoke to some clients in Chicago today who said they had already voted. “Early and often?” I asked. They said, “You know that’s a Chicago thing.” And I said, “Yes, I do.”.
In my field, I don’t ask how people vote. Guaranteed to piss off half of my clients.
I still have my fever dream of a large uprising of women and Harris surprising everyone and winning Texas, but the practical side of me is trying to prepare to not lose my will to live when Trump takes the state by 53%. (He only got 52% in 2020)
No. Its pretty obvious when it selects the wrong one, but the screen and the touchscreen were definitely out of sync, and in every race the machine sorted Republican first. Of course, surprisingly, most of the local and judge elections only had a Democrat.
Is that standard in some places? I thought the candidates were sorted alphabetically. When I go to vote, I'll take note of how they do things in Minnesota.
Prison sentences for child sexual assault cases are inadequate. It’s time to get serious about child abuse!
This motherfucker was a child predator and you release him with pay, first of all. Then, you fire his child raping ass and start telling sob stories to your congregation.
“Oh no, how could this happen? We had no idea! Pray for him!”
These churches are staging grounds for, you guessed it, YOUTH MINISTERS, the lowest form of varmint. Tax these sin bins!
It has gotten to the point where these things are more expected than shocking. At least the victims are being listened to and believed at long last. I can only wonder about the countless cases of sexual assault that went unreported, or were never prosecuted over the years, thanks to Christian privilege. His MAGA hat is also revealing. The preachers warned of the anti-Christ for centuries, then when he showed up, they voted for him. That the evangelicals can support such a grotesquely immoral man, is all you need to know about what their morals amount to in practice.
It's also exposed the hypocrisy of those thumping the pulpit loudest about "family values" and "sexual impropriety".
I hold the people in the pews equally responsible. They are the people who fund and enable the preachers.
Now we are getting somewhere! I think as soon as we get free of t RUMP a presidential crime commission, that we the people demand!, should be formed to investigate those in power that allowed a multiple felony charged individual to run for the most important office perhaps in the entire world!
I hope we get rid of Trump, because this country isn't going to survive if he isn't held accountable.
Yes. There's a reason they are always obsessing about pedophilia.
Wish we could have known about all this shit back in the 90's, when they first started crowing about "family values." We even had a functional court system back then. I don't know if things still would have gotten this far or not. They still had their Lee Atwater teaching them the value of dirty tricks, the Heritage Foundation was in its heyday, and FOX was already in full swing, but having this information put in front of the religious folk a couple of decades before they were MAGAtized...would it have headed off the madness that was come, or merely delayed it?
At very least, people would have had something weighty to throw at the Moral Majority crowd whenever they started blathering about morals and ethics.
More like the Immoral Majority.
A popular bumper sticker from that time period was "The Moral Majority Is Neither." I had one displayed on my fridge with a fridge magnet. I wanted to put it on my car, but the previous time I had put an anti-conservative bumper sticker on it, I discovered about a week later that someone had keyed it on both sides.
I guess that was one of the harbingers of the nastiness to come. When I look back, I remember quite a few scary or outrageous episodes that later turned out to be the first fetid hints of the slowly gathering shitstorm that now engulfs the entire country.
Sadly churches have been enabling sexual abuse for centuries. I think things would have been no better than now in the 90s. But it's worse now in one important way: the Internet has enabled these freaks to get away with abusing much larger numbers of children because it's not just the kids in their own church anymore 😞.
Everyone was reeling from the Satanic Panic and putting warning labels on music (thanks, Tipper) to pay attention to the shenanigans happening in the churches and isolated homes following those woodshed cannons of child rearing; plus ppl didn’t have nanny cams & kids didn’t have cellphones
We also needed to learn better vocabularies to describe the behavior, which took another generation or so, and is still difficult (or impossible) for so many kids.
This is why it has always been “dangerous” to have so many *books* available in libraries and online.
I mean, *outside of approved sources* of information have been resisted by every institution religious or otherwise since the beginning, right?
Yep. It's always been the babble, God's holey word as the one and only source of knowledge and wisdom for the flocks. Holding up the cobbled-together scribblings of dubious authorship as the font of all wisdom for the modern world, a world that doesn't even remotely resemble the tribal sheep-herding culture that plagiarized er, produced it, has always been their schtick.
I can remember when I believed this without question. The absurdity was staring me right in the face and I couldn't see it until long after I had reached adulthood. I was so thoroughly brainwashed in the Blood of the Lamb it disturbed me when anyone challenged its veracity.
*sigh*
The evangelicals support that grotesquely immoral man because he is just like them.
And that says a breathtaking lot about evangelicals.
They sensed a kindred spirit and latched onto him like ticks on a dog.
Y'know, seeing where this is going, be it community or polls, there's honestly this time many more in this country that have sense enough not to vote for the guy; not forgetful of his first term and even worse should he have won.
So whereas to disagree is an obvious half and half here, alongside us, does it already show that she's going to win. The ignorance is definite, as well as seen, people like this man to only further prove that point, and most of all, where Kamala is mentally. Whereas idiocy is something, it's where it should be. So we'll see who gives us a country again since Biden was already in use of the broom and dustpan, I suppose.
Whoop-dee-fuckin'-doo, won’t you believe it? Another one of these cases.
It’s not gay people or trans people or drag queens that we should be scared of, it’s the 'family values' crowd that are actually coming to groom your kids.
The more typical it is, the more Kamala's polls continue to stand out. Because she's lightin' the guy up right now. And with looming wonders if dementia is making itself known with Trump, it's clear where it isn't fit.
And Trump's part of the pedo problem as well.
Pssst… don’t ask him why he’s on Epstein's list!
Also wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that You-Know-Who had Frontotemporal Dementia all along…
You mean the church's , pastors and the counselors that think they are buying off their sins because of being under a roof of a tax exempt business .......that they think gives them freedom to rape children . Time to tax church's
𝐿𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑦 𝑈𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝐶𝑃𝐴𝐶 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ’𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑎 𝑔𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑊𝑒 𝐾𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝐸𝑥𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑊ℎ𝑦 𝑌𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑉𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑂𝑢𝑟 𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑟
Youth pastor type does horrible youth pastor things. Gets caught. Church makes one statement to the general public saying "See! We did the right thing and fired him and cooperated with the cops, not like those dirty Catholics!" While proceding to memory hole and unperson the criminal from what the congregation knows. The coverup is still happening. They don't actually care about the real victims, just their fake victim: the reputation of the church.
I liked their page. It's a step up from the memory hole "web page? What web page? We don't know what you're talking about, there was never anything here. Move along now."
But yes, I agree, the church will likely not change anything about their internal practices. They may acknowledge it happened, but they seem intent on not learning anything from it.
Almost heaved up my breakfast looking at that last pic of the child rapist with the red hat of Satan on his head and the adjudicated rapist on his shirt.
"And they shall wear the mark of the beast on their their foreheads"... even their own damn book told them. Too bad they don't read it.
So glad you dug this up -- how fitting!
Love it (what you wrote not the photo)!
+++
I notice there are no drag queens or librarians in this story.
It's still their fault, somehow.
He only did it because he read Judy Blume, perhaps.
J'ai pas la référence culturelle.
Author of the book "Are you there God? It's me, Margaret"
However, the mature topics in Blume's books have generated criticism[12][13] and controversy.[11][13] The ALA has named Blume as one of the most frequently challenged authors of the 21st century.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Blume
Which reminds me, I tried to check it out a while ago when the movie came out, but it was unavailable. I'm sure I've read it, I just don't remember any of it. I'll probably head to the library in a bit and if I can see the line isn't too long, go vote on my way over.
I began reading it to see what the fuss was all about but gave up at chapter 5. It seems the book is much better suited to a tween than a retiree, so I was kind of bored.
A children's author is who is frequently banned for reasons not understood to sane people.
I've said before a drag queen caught raping kids has a very high probability of a stiletto heel between the eyes.
Gives new meaning to "slay."
And yet that goober of a pastor titled his "sermon" after a catchphrase famously connected with Bianca del Rio, a highly successful drag artist. The Christianists truly cannot help themselves, can they; they're just fascinated.
What IS it with all these good old boy tRump/Jesus (in that order) worshippers and their predilection to commit sex crimes against children?
Religion and churches are about power, Trump is about power. People who want to use power to transgress are drawn to these. Committing sexual crimes against children is just one of the transgressions they seek to commit. Having followers who are taught to obey arbitrary and contradictory things just makes it easier to commit crimes. The Venn diagram of Trump believers and people who follow instruction from the invisible sky dude show nearly complete overlap. Those that fall outside it, are planning on taking advantage of those within.
Power with controlling fear. Fear that one winds up in some fictitious place being burned and tortured forever for not believing in some invisible creator. That does nothing to prevent the horrific suffering and death of its creations.
Keep the fear alive?
They have a difficult time understanding the actual meaning of the verse where Jesus says "suffer the children".
Because the premise of their beliefs is that White Men get to have sex with whomever they want, especially "chattel" like women and children.
Methinks they doth protest too much.
I know most men are good people, but there seems to an inordinate number who just can't be trusted alone with kids.
"The alleged crimes stretch back to 2014"
They probably go back even farther. That's just shortly after he legally became an adult, when the crimes became prosecutable.
The use of “alleged” always makes me think they’re trying to crimewash him.
They have to write alleged to avoid being sued if the accused is found not guilty... even if it's clear the dude is guilty as sin (ha ha).
Guiltier than sin!
If you want to really get me pissed off, you can be a Christian and tell me about how you want to "proclaim the truth in love." no truth, certainly no love, but lots and lots and lots of proclaiming.
Oh yes, let's get back to proclaiming the truth in love. I sent this to Smilin' Al Mohler a few years ago. It applies to these molester protectors, BECAUSE I DON'T BELIEVE FOR A SINGLE GODDAM MINUTE THAT THIS IS NOTWHAT THEY'RE DOING, AND THAT NO ONE KNEW ABOUT THIS UNTIL JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO.
not to mention, little Zach himself producing this garbage, and then showing up to preach..
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I must be stupid, because I just don't understand "proclaiming the truth in love", certainly not as Iunderstand words like "truth" and "love".
Here you are complaining of all of this bad behavior by HETEROSEXUALS, and you are upset because two men or two women WANT to make the commitment to each other that you deem so important that not making and keeping it is causing the decline of our culture?
I have gay coupled friends that have been together for longer than all seven of Newt Gingrich's or Rush Limbaugh's marriages combined. I know of at least one couple where you could throw in Liz Taylor's 8 marriages in addition, and they have still been together longer. I saw many men-- myself included-- care for their sick partners and boyfriends 30 years ago as they were dying, while their families and churches abandoned them, just like Jesus would have, I'm sure. Straight people abandon their families and children for no other reason than convenience, as you so rightly observe. A fatal disease would hardly keep them around, would it?
And we're the problem?
And you tell us you love us? Do you love us when you blame us for the state of heterosexual marriage and family, conflating our lives and our right to live our lives after the fashion that nature has made us, with the child abuse, child molestation, and partner abuse of the HETERO world, where REAL people are hurt and harmed, not the fabricated hurt and harm that gay people are accused of causing just by existing? Do you love us when you call our lives abominations, dangerous, filthy, disease, perverted and sick, on the basis of what you prefer to believe, rather than the facts of our lives? Did you actually ever talk to gay people whose lives have not been hurt and harmed by the self-hatred you preach?
Exactly how much to you love us when you oppose everything we try to do to live our lives peacefully and happily, with the same fulfillment you would expect for yourself? Exactly how much do you love us when you join political campaigns that attempt to demonize us, lying,propagandizing, fear mongering, calling us a threat to marriage, family, children, freedom, faith, liberty, and the whole of Western civilization, such as it is? Do you truly love us when you seek to disadvantage us legally in every way that you can, to make our lives as difficult and unpleasant as possible, to impose your religious beliefs upon people who most vehemently do not share them? Is it your "love" that makes that OK? I can just feel the love there, although I must confess I would probably prefer being hated, it being a tad more honest.
And then you have THIS little gem. "We also need to be willing to take the hit of "being judgmental" by continuing to proclaim the truth in love. Often, people mistake the judgment of God as us judging them." We gay people need controlling. We gay people need YOUR moral guidance. After all, we are barbarians, aren’t we? We gay people are moral and social children that must be supervised by the all-knowing and morally superior. We’re too immature, too wrapped in the coils of lust and sin to know anything about our lives, our sexuality, our faith, our loves, or our families.
I call shenanigans! Very frankly, I have never met, talked to, or debated any faith based opponent of my right live my life as I see fit, without the burden of your animus-disguised-as-love, who knew the first thing about human sexuality in general or gay people in particular. And as for knowing what the bible says about homosexuality, a word that did not appear in it until 1948? Don’t get me started.
You want to believe you love me? Wonderful,but don't expect me to buy it. You are in fact judging, as much as you would like to pretend that you are not. As a gay man, I have yet to hear anyone proclaiming the truth in love about gay people without making being gay the extra special-icky sin that they so fervently want it to be. Are you really god's Best Buddy, that he keeps you informed of all of his thoughts? I don't think so.
I don't think I am mistaking the judgment of God for you judging other people. I've got eyes and ears and brains, and besides...I don't hear God talking, I only hear YOU talking. Proclaiming the truth in love? I'm sorry to inform you, but this isn't love, it's narcissism.
I’m almost certain that Jesus was speaking to you in a number of places. So I’ll proclaim the truth in love to YOU—something about not being concerned with the sins of others until you yourself have achieved a bit of perfection.“Judge not lest ye be judged.” That doesn’t mean that you rub your hands with glee at the thought of God is judging people exactly as you would, were you God, which you aren't. “Look not for the speck in your bothers eye” because you have one big ol’ log in your own, starting with the belief that you really aren’t judging anybody, your just spreading “the truth in love”.“Let him among you…” Well, everyone might be a sinner, but not everyone is throwing stones.
Exactly what part of what The Lord had to say does not apply to a bible-believing Christian such as yourself?
I’ll leave you with this thought. There are plenty of Christians, and plenty of Christian denominations, which no longer buy the myths about gay people and god that you people are so happy to repeat, all in the name of proclaiming the truth in love. I’m not a homosexual, an abomination, a problem, or any particular kind of sinner, and if I am, you have your own sins to keep you busy. I’m certainly not a threat to you, your family, your children, or your faith, unless the whole of Christianity boils down to “get the homos by proclaiming the truth in love.”
I won’t tell you if I am a Christian. But I will tell YOU, pastor, that YOU do not know my relationship with God. You do not represent God, and until I hear it from god himself, you do not speak for God. No one has given YOU any authority to judge others. The problem here is simple: you have chosen judgment over God, no matter if you would prefer to call it “proclaiming the truth in love”, or admitting it for what it so clearly is. God gives us a choice: self-righteousness or Him. When you make the wrong choice, choosing moralizing judgmentalism as so many of you have done, I can only suggest that you repent and find your lord before it’s too late.
That’s because they run on the Republican definition of the words “love” and “truth”.
Ah let me run that through a wingnut to english translator..."Molest, and abuse."
BRAVISSIMO!!!
Thanks.
“Zach Radcliff led church members in a downtown, maskless sing-along that marched to a local cemetery.”
How apropos. And how many of those people never left the cemetery during the pandemic?
Not enough and too many. Not enough in that we need fewer of those superstitious control freaks, too many in that way too many people died from the botched response of Dear Leader.
I’ll bet you he took down a few of those names to use next month.
Here we go again. Pastor [possibly youth pastor] = sexual abuser. And I have to say, scrolling down to see the MAGA hat and the Trump T-shirt was no surprise at all. It's getting to the point where headlines like this are becoming routine.
And they damned well SHOULDN'T BE.
When you advertise a "young men can do no wrong" religion, you get a lot of young men who want to do wrong signing up for it.
Take some small measure of comfort that this one has been arrested and is being prosecuted.
It’s barely a breath of a drop in the ocean.
From the Oakwood Church disclaimer: "The safety and protection of the individuals in our church is what is paramount to us. We are devoted to doing what we can for the care of the victims of these crimes."
Please DON'T provide "pastoral counseling" soaked in your misogynistic, male-authoritarian theology, the utter crap that enabled the perp to manipulate his victims and stay above suspicion for so long.
Just pay for SECULAR counseling from licensed providers trained in the latest evidence-based modalities.
Pastoral "Counseling" should be restricted to religious advice. Anything else should be considered practicing without a license.
"Pastoral counseling" is a lie. It is nothing more than pounding more "jesus allows this" into a kid's head. Along with a huge dose of "you are going to hell forever" because you reported this.
"The safety and protection of the individuals in our church is what is paramount to us. We are devoted to doing what we can for the care of the victims of these crimes."
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a8565e261203c3ac462966a9f273fe644509cf522631cfc72d15f5e4803cdb1a.jpg
It is truly a shame that we cannot find these people before they are able to abuse kids - or anyone else. I have believed for years that this occurs in right-wing christianist families because of authoritarian parents and extreme, puritanical takes on sex within these families. Abused kids have the potential to become abusing adults.
100% agree. Finding the Zachs before they harm kids is good. Preventing the Franks from creating the Zachs is better.
Most of that will have to be cultural as you can't criminalize most aspects of malicious or incompetent parenting. But we could at least criminalize parental physical abuse such as hitting, starving, and otherwise torturing your own kids, with no exceptions given for religion or other parental ideology.
Everybody has a potential to become an abuser. Most people still don't become an abuser of kids or anyone at all. If you want me to believe that this is more common for abused kids than for not abused kids, you have to show me the stats.
I’m so tired of this shit. My son is gay and demonized, while it’s always coming from in the house. Organized religion needs to get itself together and stop bearing false witness.
About 1700 years too late for that.
They desperately need to do what Jesus mentioned in Matthew 7:5 and first remove the plank/log/beam from their own eyes before even trying to remove the speck/splinter/mote from the eye of another.
They 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 to do as 'ol JC commanded them to and go practice their religion in the closet where nobody can hear them, and stop trying to stuff us into it instead.
It’s now a log cabin, and they’re very comfortable in it. They don’t want to leave.
I am Gay and get kkkrister shit constantly.
OT
In better news, Happy 65th Birthday to Weird Al.
(Lots of Marvel-related birthdays today. "Hulk" director Ang Lee turns 70. Sam Raimi (director of "Spider-Man") is also 65. And everybody's favorite Merc With a Mouth Ryan "Deadpool" Reynolds celebrates birthday number 48).
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2d762ec372ee8abef5f8fdf938e2c4029ee7fb5fd8e8a462375bf06229ea4487.jpg
Here's Al and his band's most recent new song/video, recorded to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the release of their final LP, "Mandatory Fun."
youtu.be/y0ZoX4dBvwk
I think you posted this months ago.
I did. Not sure who saw it, so I said "What the heck, I'll post it again. It's Al, after all." :)
For the love of Thor (I wish), I'm old.
Speaking of hot men, the tech who just came for the semi-annual HVAC check-up was really cute. I swear one of these days I'm going to get up the courage to compliment these guys.
OT: the line to vote at 5p on a Wednesday is longer than the line on a Saturday for the 2008 election.
I'm going in person on Election Day, this year. Woe be unto the motherfucker who gets between this bitch and the ballot box.
I’ve decided since 2016 that I’m not risking my vote not being counted on some complaint that it doesn’t count because it was early voting. Day of is the only way to go.
Not only that... I want to be 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 voting, and I mean to bluntly inform anyone who asks exactly how I'm casting my vote and why. Not a particularly dangerous thing to do in a solidly blue district, but if there are any dipshits planning on letting Stein or any other spoiler asshat use their ballot for toilet paper, I want them to at 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 be horribly fucking embarrassed about it.
My ballot has already been counted.
One! One ballot! Ha, ha, ha!
I spoke to some clients in Chicago today who said they had already voted. “Early and often?” I asked. They said, “You know that’s a Chicago thing.” And I said, “Yes, I do.”.
In my field, I don’t ask how people vote. Guaranteed to piss off half of my clients.
Z³, slowly step away from the bong. I'm cutting you off.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b9f5acbd547fdf29a8935e073e840b42b2c229c03f630a4b2790d9e437d15226.png
Mine too.
There seem to be record turnouts – particularly of women – which is probably good for Harris right?
We certainly hope so.
Luckily, the memes have already been printed for anyone who isn't a filthy rich, white, cis-het man, but still votes Republican: https://telescoper.blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/slugs-for-salt-slugs-for-salt-slugs-for-salt-slugs-14063210782600136.png
I still have my fever dream of a large uprising of women and Harris surprising everyone and winning Texas, but the practical side of me is trying to prepare to not lose my will to live when Trump takes the state by 53%. (He only got 52% in 2020)
Maybe Ted Cruz has turned off enough Texas voters to make a difference in the POTUS race as well? (Fingers crossed!)
Allred should really be pushing the Snowflake story. Republican disregard for pets is not a new phenomenon.
I’m 100 percent with you on that one.
I certainly hope so. (Please, please, please please please please please......)
Still in line 5:32
Voted. Stupid machine kept trying to vote Republican
20-year-old meme excavation incoming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq79wG3DqvI
Funny and frightening at the same time.
Haven’t voting machines been Republican-owned since Bush the Lesser?
To add...
Hope you told the election officials there about the voting machine's attempted shenanigans.
No. Its pretty obvious when it selects the wrong one, but the screen and the touchscreen were definitely out of sync, and in every race the machine sorted Republican first. Of course, surprisingly, most of the local and judge elections only had a Democrat.
Is that standard in some places? I thought the candidates were sorted alphabetically. When I go to vote, I'll take note of how they do things in Minnesota.
Prison sentences for child sexual assault cases are inadequate. It’s time to get serious about child abuse!
This motherfucker was a child predator and you release him with pay, first of all. Then, you fire his child raping ass and start telling sob stories to your congregation.
“Oh no, how could this happen? We had no idea! Pray for him!”
These churches are staging grounds for, you guessed it, YOUTH MINISTERS, the lowest form of varmint. Tax these sin bins!
Back tax them!