While there’s some debate on how to view the recent murder of an anti-abortion protester, the guy’s son actually had some interesting things to say about him:

“It will be impossible for some to believe, but my dad really didn’t care about abortion. He did this to stalk, harass, terrorize, scream at, threaten, frighten, and verbally abuse women. He had a pathologic hatred of women: his mom, my mom, everyone. After my mom finally left him and he lost his favorite punching bag the violence and abuse that was always contained within our 4 walls was unleased on the people of Owosso. My dad used the pro-life movement and 1st Amendments foundations to defend him, support him, and enable him. He fooled them all. He was at the high school because my niece was there, and female family members were always his favorite targets. Again, my dad didn’t care about abortion. He wanted to hurt people, upset people. He enjoyed making people suffer. His goal was to be shot on a sidewalk. His goal was to make someone so angry, to make them feel so terrorized, to make them feel the only way they could make him stop was to kill him. His pro-life stance was the most perfect crime I personally know of. He hid behind the 1st Amendment and was allowed to stalk, terrorise, harass, be obsene, ect. These things are crimes. Offending people isn’t a crime, and having different political views isn’t a crime, but he committed several crimes over the last 20 years and got away with it. Yes I really am his oldest son. Owosso is now rid of a mad man.”

Even though the paper confirmed the source, it could still be the case that his son is lying, or has a beef with him pertaining to something else. But if he’s telling the truth — man! — what a fucking misogynist.

Xianity can lead to misogyny? What are the odds?…

Here’s the video I promised:

Anti-abortion group wants to make birth-control illegal in Florida

TALLAHASSEE — A nationwide anti-abortion group launched an effort in Florida Friday to outlaw all abortions and certain types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and the morning-after pill. The religion-infused movement, called “Personhood Florida,” would define conception in Florida’s constitution at the “biological beginnings,” supporters said — when the sperm meets the egg. The group filed its amendment today but the exact ballot language is still being worked out, said Secretary of State Spokeswoman Jennifer Krell-Davis. The amendment seeks to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Also criminalized: the morning-after pill and oral contraceptives taken by women, known as the pill. “There are some (birth control) methods that kill a child,” said Pat McEwan, who is leading the Personhood Florida group. [...] At a press conference in Tallahassee, speakers blamed abortion for the financial insolvency of Social Security and the bankruptcy of American auto manufacturers, citing the millions of terminated pregnancies since Roe. v. Wade as costing the nation citizens and customers. They also said that a fetus is a person and should be given protections of law. “It is obvious in our ultrasounds that that little baby, even at just eight weeks old, is a person,” said Brenda MacMenamin, a Personhood Florida organizer. “Their rights our self-evident and they are inalienable. We want to give the voters of the state of Florida the right to vote on personhood.”

Wow…social security, the automobile industry, both negatively impacted through abortion. What else can we blame on abortion?

And it’s obvious at eight weeks that it’s a person? Are you high?

Oh, that’s right, you’re a xian — of course you’re high…

I was shocked, really shocked when I received an email message from a son of a family friend who has gone from being a moderate Christian (Presbyterian) and the way he was raised to super, cult-like fundie! When I have seen this young man off and on over the years he seemed like such a sweetheart and I always thought he was a good guy. Well, we got into a discussion online recently about health care and I brought up the question of how Christians can oppose making it so all people can have access to health insurance and health care. This led to him pulling some quotes of Jesus saying something about “there will always be poor” and “if people aren’t going to work then they can’t eat”. Well, I told him that he can cherry pick whatever he wants out of the Babble to try to justify his greediness, but I can also pull out many passages where Jesus said to feed the poor, house the homeless, etc. Then he argued that there is only one way to read the Bible, it is a literal document according to him and nothing to be interpreted. So, I brought up the book of Leviticus, thinking I had him on that one with the stoning of adulterers and children who curse their parents, etc. and expected the usual answer of “that was then and this is now”…BUT here is part of the shocking email he wrote back to me:

I think that many people still take the book literally. I mean, it is God’s Word. That is the way law used to be carried out, literally. When I say I believe in those laws, I am not saying that I believe people should go outside of the law to execute those judgments. However, I do believe that those laws should be a part of American law.

There are very many people today that believe that homosexuality is a sin and that adultery is a sin. I suppose what you may find surprising is that I believe the Bible for what it says and that those crimes deserve the death penalty. I believe that God is the author of the Bible, not man. With that in mind, I don’t think it is right for me to try to change what it says or say that it can’t be taken literally just because I may not like it or agree with what it says.

The conversation continued and I asked again just to clarify to make sure I was hearing this once sweet young man correctly, that he agrees with the killing of homosexuals, adulterers as they do in fundamentalist Islam and he said yes.

Religion took a nice young man, who was raised to be caring and kind, and turned into a gun-toting, homosexual hating, fucking Bible literalist! Bad God!

Kentucky Mother Upset by Football Player Son’s Baptism

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The parents of a 16-year-old Kentucky football player who was baptized along with some teammates during a trip organized by their coach said Tuesday they believe their son may have felt some pressure to go through with the ceremony. Parents said the voluntary trip was organized by Breckinridge County High School football coach Scott Mooney, who is a member of the Baptist church where the revival was held Aug. 26. Dannie Ammons told The Associated Press he had no idea his son, Robert Coffey, was being taken to a church in another county on a school bus. The teen told them he was going to see a motivational speaker. Eight or nine other players were baptized at Franklin Crossroads Baptist Church, he said. “There wasn’t supposed to be anything religious,” said Ammons, who is Catholic. Robert Coffey said the furor surrounding his visit to the church is “kind of stupid” and that he decided to go through with the baptism because some of his friends were doing it. Now, Coffey said he wishes he would have just stayed home. “I don’t want any part of this.”

Hold on a sec…

Xians are lying? No way! That never happens!

But you Kentucky Xians don’t really care about psychological coercion or peer pressure, do ya?

Hey, please do us all a favor — and just go fuck yourselves…

Another religious nutter following instructions of his imaginary friend.

Fanatic hijacked Mexican plane after ‘revelation’

MEXICO CITY – A Bolivian religious fanatic briefly hijacked a jetliner from the beach resort of Cancun as it landed in Mexico City on Wednesday, police said. All passengers and the crew were released unharmed.

The Bible-carrying hijacker used a juice can he said was a bomb to hold the 103 passengers and crew on the tarmac for more than an hour. Masked police stormed the aircraft with their guns drawn and escorted several handcuffed men away without firing a shot. Police later said there was only one hijacker.

Jose Flores, 44, told investigators he hijacked Aeromexico Flight 576 after a divine revelation, according to Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna. Flores said Wednesday’s date — 9-9-09 — is the satanic number 666 turned upside down.

Flores, speaking to reporters after he was detained, said he took control of the aircraft with “a juice can with some little lights I attached.”

“Christ is coming soon,” he added, smiling.

As the plane was landing, Flores stood up and showed his contraption to a flight attendant, saying he and three others were hijacking the plane, Garcia Luna said. Flores later told police his three companions were “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

The hijacker is not only a looney god believer, he is a criminal and a self-described pastor.

Garcia Luna said Flores is a drug addict who was convicted of armed robbery in Bolivia, and has lived in Mexico for 17 years. Flores described himself as a pastor in southern Oaxaca state who had gone to Cancun to preach.

Crazy Xians!

I stumbled across this shudder-inducing tidbit, and it is recent enough to be of serious concern:

Spiritual Mapping and Spiritual Warfare – Muthee and the "Transformations" Franchise / 1

A video starring Thomas Muthee as a prayer warrior and witch hunter was released in 1999. "Transformations" was the first in a series of videos that would soon become the heart of the Transformations franchise, a network of prayer warriors, ministries, organizations, and businesses, brought together for the purpose of promoting Christian theocracies. They share the goal of bringing their own communities and nations into the "Kingdom." These videos would play a major role in the teaching and promotion of spiritual mapping and spiritual warfare. Following is the story of those videos and how the Transformations brand has propelled the development of an emerging international belief system, the New Apostolic Reformation, and how it is bringing that movement into your community and your government.

Overview

The Transformations videos are advertised as having been viewed by 200 million people in 70 languages. A star of the videos is none other than Thomas Muthee – the same man whose anointing of Sarah Palin has become an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. But the videos are important for far more reasons than Palin and Muthee. Muthee’s words, just prior to anointing Palin, on invading and infiltrating society and government are not aberrations. They reveal the disturbing ideology of a growing and powerful religio-political movement in the U.S. and around the world.

An international explosion in "taking communities" through spiritual warfare and expulsion of demons, from individuals and from entire geographic areas, has impacted denominations around the globe. The popularizing of these methods is sourced in the massive effort to evangelize the world in the decades prior to the year 2000. Much of the dissemination of these ideas was through parachurch organizations (religious organizations not associated with a particular denomination), that emerged from Pentecostalism and developed networks around the globe. In the 1990s, a missions and church growth expert named C. Peter Wagner found a way to coalesce these activities into an organized structure now called the New Apostolic Reformation. His colleague, George Otis, Jr. simultaneously developed the Sentinel Group which has produced the series of Transformation videos and resulting Transformations organizations promoting these spiritual warfare ideas. The videos have been a major factor in the global promotion of "prayer warrior" networks specifically linked to these efforts.

Are you getting pissed? Not to mention a little nervous? I know I am.

The franchise has been so successful that the "Transformations brand" has a distinct meaning to many worldwide. The videos, which have been used as the central teaching tool of the movement for nearly a decade, reveal not just another grandiose program of global evangelizing — but an explicitly theocratic political movement of consequence in a number of countries – including the United States. There are Transformation-related groups in almost every state and every major city.

I say you’ll pry my freedoms from my cold dead fingers first.

The New Apostolic Reformation and the associated Transformations "franchises" aim to unify the church around the globe and take control of the world for the "Kingdom of God." This movement has evolved into its own distinct structure with networks of Apostles and Prophets around the globe who believe that that Christendom should be restructured under their authority to accomplish the task of bringing together a unified end time church that will help to usher in the Kingdom of God.

Insane is the word that springs to mind. And the video highlights just how gratuitously horrible the end result will be.

These believers are not waiting for the Rapture but believe they must combat evil themselves through aggressively taking control of society and government. The Transformations videos have been used as a major promotional tool for the advancement of the methods for taking control – spiritual mapping and spiritual warfare. The videos demonstrate the taking control of communities and nations through large networks of "prayer warriors." whose spiritual warfare is used to expel and destroy the demons that cause societal ills. Once the territorial demons, witches, and generational curses are removed, the "born again" Christians in the videos take control of society. The videos then claim that these communities experience an "alignment with God" which allows for miraculous curing of poverty, disease, environmental degradations, and other societal ills.

Demons and Witches and Curses? Oh my! Seriously, we’re going to have to take some sort of action on this – because we’re  talking the Inquisition times ten.

And of course, the spin:

The video series glorifies the movement towards theocratic governance, real or imagined, in Uganda, Fiji, Colombia, and Guatemala, as well as the U.S. They are used as a tool for building "Transformations" brand organizations that in turn glorify the concept of authoritarian religious social engineering. The "stars" of these videos have already played a role in promoting witch hunts in Africa, endorsing death squads in Guatemala, the de-Catholicizing of Brazil, and the mythology of miraculous curing of AIDS in Uganda. The Transformations promote a complete merger of church and state and offer a glimpse of the "Kingdom" to come, when the world is purged of all other religion, and "Spirit-filled, born again" Christians take control of the leadership of all societal and government institutions.

Oh yes, and we know that these things tend to end badly.

In case this sounds esoteric and far away, it is important to underscore that this movement is influential and powerful enough to have encompassed not only the Governor of Alaska, but also Ted Haggard, the now disgraced but once nationally renowned head of the National Association of Evangelicals. These leaders are not the exceptions, but the rule, as the movement comprises hundreds of organizations and thousands of churches across the country. Their activities fly under the radar of popular media by operating through hundreds of stealth evangelizing programs, with the goal of fulfilling this dream. However, the movement is currently receiving more scrutiny due to the revelation of the anointing ceremony of Sarah Palin by Thomas Muthee and other ties between Palin and the New Apostolic Reformation.

There is no better term for this than terrorism. Monotheistic religions rely heavily on argumentum ad baculum, and there is no need to read between the lines of the rhetoric here: it is clear that these people have no other agenda than to force their religion upon any of us who don’t believe. And as there is no spelled out dispensation of punishment for those who resist, we can only assume the worst. Exile is the pleasantest we can expect at the hands of these zealots, and the mind shudders at the worst imaginations. Visions of strappado are dancing through my head right now, because this is no less than belief at gunpoint, and beatific love at the end of a branding iron.

And while I hope against hope that this post is misdirected, that this will never come to pass, that reason will have sway over the savage heartbeats of our fellow men, I would also suggest that it may be prudent to keep some firearms on hand, and get some combat training under our respective belts.

Again, it may come to nothing, but the adage of the ounce versus the pound springs to mind.

This is the Apostate, signing off.

Judge clears way for dinosaur park to be seized

A federal judge has cleared the way for the government’s seizure of a creationism theme park in Pensacola owned by a couple convicted of tax fraud. A ruling by U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers states that the nine properties that make up Dinosaur Adventure Land as well as two bank accounts associated with the park will be used to satisfy $430,400 owed to the federal government. Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, is serving 10 years in federal prison for failing to pay the Internal Revenue Service more than $470,000 in employee taxes. He was found guilty in November 2006 on 58 counts, including failure to pay employee taxes and making threats against investigators. The conviction culminated 17 years of Hovind sparring with the IRS. Saying he was employed by God and his ministers were not subject to payroll taxes, he claimed no income or property. Hovind is incarcerated at the Edgefield Federal Correction Institution in South Carolina. His wife, Jo, also was sentenced to a year in federal prison for her role in the tax fraud. She’s currently jailed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna. Rodgers’ 16-page order released late Thursday gives the government the green light to divide up the nine properties in and around the 5800 block of North Palafox Street and begin to sell them until the $430,400 forfeiture amount is satisfied. The properties have a combined value of more than what the Hovinds owe, according to Rodgers’ order, and any excess property available after the sales will be returned to the Hovinds.