In the mood for a scary story? Well, I've got a doozy. Matter of fact, I have a pair of 'em. I'm talking industrial-strength, gut-churning, sphincter-tightening creepouts here. And they could very well be coming to a location near you before much longer. Now you can't say you haven't been warned.
If you are, perchance, laboring under the misapprehension that you're familiar with the deepest depravity of the fundamentalist flying monkey mindset, I've got some disturbing news. Those religious radicals are not only worse than you think, they are a quantum leap beyond anything you can possibly imagine.
Join me on the other side and let me tell ya all about it...
"When people are fanically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."
Robert T. Pirsig, author and philosopher
There is, even as I type this, an Army of the Lord being drafted, delegated, trained and programmed. An organization called BattleCry--ominous, eh?--has been recruiting Dominionist young people through a series of concert/rally programs in Detroit, San Francisco and Philadelphia that bear no relationship whatever to Woodstock...or even Live Aid. These gatherings are coldly calculated public relations extravaganzas. They mix light shows, prayers, military imagery and hyper-ventilated rhetoric...and they explicitly encourage violence. Their deliberate intent is to conflate Christianity with war...and, at least so far, it seems to be working. By hammering home the theme of religious persecution, they appeal directly to the amygdala--the reptile brain which reacts instead of thinking--and rouse youthful passions while tapping into primal feelings of alienation and rebellion. And martyrdom. Scared yet?
BattleCry's head honcho is a sanctimonious weasel named Ron Luce, once appointed to the White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities by our present Oval Office ignoramus. Behind him are many of the same Dominionist freakjobs I named here: Robertson, Colson, Falwell...you know, the usual suspects. They have a huge organization and piles of money; they send over 5000 missionaries to more than 30 countries every year. They are not kidding and they most emphatically do not intend to take 'no' for an answer. It is their single-mindedness that scares the living daylights out of me.
Before going any further, I'd probably better clarify the terms. I use "Dominionists" to refer to the radical religious right because it doesn't confuse the issue with any mention of Christianity. These headcases are most emphatically NOT Christians, either; they repudiate the carpenter's teachings about "love ye your enemies" (Luke 6:35) or teaching "man-made rules as though they were God's law." (Mark 7:7-13) They are intolerant, hate-filled, monotheistic and self-righteous...everything that their founder railed against continuously. They are the modern-day equivalent of Pharisees and the "teachers of the law" whom the Nazarene roundly rebuked in Luke 11:39-52, so their vitriolic rantings should NEVER be confused with religion. Never.
As you might suspect, BattleCry's message is the same old hoke: Homophobic, intolerant sex-obsession and moral crisis-mongering...but they've managed to come up with a devilishly clever new wrinkle. By targeting a certain, specific demographic of young teens, the message is tailored for a potential audience that still lives at home, has no real responsibilities and has an extraordinary per capita discretionary income....plus the eternal confusion that has accompanied pubescent hormonal changes since time immemorial. This is a potent mixture, and one which they have begun exploiting to the fullest. So at these these events, they sell keepsake dog-tags along with a wide range of miliraty-themed apparel and accessories...all the while filling hungry young minds with propaganda and half-truths about morality plus full-blown falsehoods about America as a Christian nation. It sets up a disturbing echo and--whether deliberately or not--invites comparison with the Hitler Youth movement of Nazi Germany. Yuck.
My other terrifying tale is much, much worse; it involves even younger children. And sex. The brand newest way for snake-handling Dads to mess up the lives of their innocent kids is something called The Father-Daughter Purity Ball. This obscenity masquerading as a ceremony has girls as young as seven dresssed up in ballgowns as they pledge commitments of purity--meaning no nasty, dirty sex--to their fathers as the 'high priest' of the home.
This whole slimy business is simply wrong on so many levels simultaneously that it makes my teeth itch. Mark Morford, whose column in the San Francisco Chronicle affords me glorious amusement twice a week, wrote about it here, but in his happy-go-lucky hedonist approach, failed to penetrate to the sick and stinking center. Then, again, he IS paid to be more entertaining than upsetting.
First of all, does a seven-year-old even know WHAT she's pledging?? At that tender age, she cannot have any possible inkling of what the words mean! Even an 11 or 12-year-old, prior to the onset of puberty, may know what they mean...but cannot conceive of what they PORTEND. If abstinence-only sex-education is the massive failure we now know it to be, how can this absurd dress-up party result in anything different?? For a group so single-minded in their pursuit of eliminating abortions, how can they remain so stubbornly, so stupidly stone blind to the circumstances which CAUSE them?!?
Amanda Mancotte's post at [b]Pandagon[/b], {unabashed plug} absolutely nails the cultural hypocrisy inherent in the core concept of the Purity Ball. She is every bit as outraged over this abomination as she should be. The idea that somehow women are less responsible for themselves than men and must, therefore, be overseen by them, runs through every aspect of fundamentalist thinking. I cannot for the life of me imagine how females who grow up under this sort of relentless stultification must feel about themselves, about the world.
I make lots of cheap jokes at the snake-handlers' expense someetimes, but it is well to remind ourselves periodically that these are some very, very twisted people we're talking about and there isn't much about them that's funny ha-ha. I might almost feel sorry for that lot if they weren't so stridently insistent about telling me how to live my life...and trying so hard to bend the vast majority of the country to their extremist will. As it stands, however, I cannot permit them to inject the body politic with their medieval, superstitious poison. No way. I wlll not stop spreading the news of their treacherous iniquity and will stand physically against them at every turn.
I see no other choice.
Originally posted, with minor edits, as "Fundamentalist Flying Monkeys VI" at Conceptual Guerilla's Strategy & Tactics Please stop by and say hello...