Thought it couldn’t get worse/crazier than a unknown Randroid college “economist” knocking off the sitting majority leader?
Oh, no. No. No. No. No.
There’s yet a Marianas Trench for these folks to dig.
Today’s case-in-point comes from the grea batshit insane state of Oklahoma, where we meet this fine primate:
Tea Party state House candidate Scott Esk endorsed stoning gay people to death: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it,” he said in a Facebook post. Esk went on to add nuance to his position:
“That [stoning gay people to death] goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”
Never mind the deep ignorance of a key foundational story from the faith in which he claims to live:
Not to worry, though. Pressed on the subject, Mr. Esk allowed as he merely accepts such a course of action, rather than actively planning to work to put Oklahoma squarely into the 5th century. Before the Common Era.
I never said I would author legislation to put homosexuals to death, but I didn’t have a problem with it. [from here, with many more gory details here]
Glad that’s clear.
Also clear: these people hate America.
They are ignorant of its history and have no connection to the essential principles on which a pluralistic, free society utterly depends.
They must not be allowed near the levers of power. And they are the base of the Republican Party.
I leave the rest of the exercise to the reader.
Image: Lucas Cranach the Younger, Christ and the Adultress, after 1532.
Waldo
Stir the Tea Party and, sure enough, the scum rises.
Violet
I’m glad they’re saying stuff like this. I’d rather have all the crazy on view than hidden from sight.
Sandman
“Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.” — General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, USMC retired
Rich (In Name Only) in Reno
Yeah, but Jesus was dealing with Adultery, and we all know Republicans will forgive you for that, right Professor Gingrich?
Unless you’re Bill Clinton, of course.
danimal
@Violet: Yeah, they’re finding it harder and harder to find effective dogwhistles. These days, it’s pretty much siren alarms and flashing lights. They can’t hide teh crazy anymore.
Bobby B.
Scrape all the pundit varnish off and the “base” is Southern fuckwits. Be offended, go paste more pundit-varnish on that base.
Morzer
The stuff about stoning people has a long pedigree among the right wing crazies – and can probably be traced back to the despicable work of RJ Rushdoony, specifically his “The Institutes of Biblical Law” (and its popular, cutdown version “Law & Liberty”) which advocates applying Old Testament law to contemporary society. To say Rushdoony liked the death penalty would be understating the matter. His Mosaic law code even includes lying about one’s virginity in its array of crimes punishable by execution, which is bad news for Brittany Spears, among others.
MattF
@Rich (In Name Only) in Reno: And besides, Esk has said he isn’t casting the first stone, so what’s the problem?
Roger Moore
@Waldo:
I’m surprised it’s possible to tell the difference. I thought it was
turtlesscum all the way down.schrodinger's cat
I blame our clueless media for their able assist to the tea party insanity and giving Republicans cover.
AndoChronic
I’m thinking of quitting the military after twelve years (as a combat veteran) because of these asshats, and the general tone in the military. I really hoped to push through to twenty though. Being that I’m white, brought up upper middle class (by today’s standards) and am attending graduate school in the fall I have never in my life felt so discriminated against as being a liberal in the military.
shelley
It’s gotten to the point where you can no longer be shocked by what these troglodytes spew up. It’s almost like they’re in a reality show contest, trying to prove who’s the most inhuman.
“I never said I would author legislation to put homosexuals”. Well, that’s reassuring. He’s just asking you to elect someone who believes such insanity.
Not wanting to go all Godwin but how soon before some Tea Bagger suggests gas chambers for teh Gay?
Roger Moore
@Bobby B.:
There are plenty of Western fuckwits in there, too.
nancy darling
This is from Esk’s campaign web site.Why am I not surprised that his wife would divorce him?
Morzer
@nancy darling:
I imagine you’d have to be stoned not to divorce the charming Mr Esk.
beltane
@nancy darling: “Frivolous divorce”=Pam finally got fed up with the abusive fuckwit.
Long Tooth
“They are ignorant of its history and have no connection to the essential principles on which a pluralistic, free society utterly depends”.
Nonsense. Southerners know their history. Indeed, they celebrate it. The “essential principles” you allude to are very well known to them. As well they should be, given that generations of Southern people (unto the latest) have spent centuries attempting to extinguish them.
Botsplainer
@MattF:
Nearest I can tell, the predominant public form of American Christianity holds to the central message of this:
When you put that together with the Calvinist/Libertarian credo Sacrifice is for Suckers, you have our national ethical compass laying out a very clear course.
beltane
@shelley: A couple of years ago a Republican state legislator in NH said that Hitler “had the right idea” when it came to the disabled so I wouldn’t be surprised if the desire for gas chambers for the gays is a been there done that kind of thing in teabagger circles.
Calouste
@nancy darling:
In the betting pool on the reasons of the divorce, I’d like to put a tenner it’s because she caught him with a male prostitute.
boatboy_srq
And then they are shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that people go out and act on language like this.
Are they stoning adulteresses, too? (Oh, right, they’re starving these days because We’re Broke™.
Are they selling off their daughters for the right prices? Are they marrying their brothers’ widows (and if so, how many wives is that?)? How about those cheeseburgers? All-you-can-eat shrimp dinners? Baby back ribs? Hmmm?
There is one single reference to same-sex anything in Leviticus; there are sixteen separate injunctions against combining meat and dairy in the same book.
Wankers.
ETA @Violet: Agreed. It’s just infuriating that they can be such bloodthirsty idjits.
Hal
Only some, huh?
SatanicPanic
Stoning for being gay? That sounds an awful lot (to my admittedly ignorant ears) like the Sharia law they’re always harping on
ranchandsyrup
he’s a “heavily libertarian” conservative. i don’t think he has any idea what those words even mean.
Morzer
@SatanicPanic:
No, no, This is “White Male Christian Mosaic Sharia Law” which makes all the difference.
boatboy_srq
@nancy darling:
must be dogwhistle for “my wife left me because I’m an a##hat.”
Morzer
@ranchandsyrup:
“Heavily libertarian” = “Morbidly obese selfish white man”.
MattF
@boatboy_srq: Or maybe “My wife has noticed that I stare at men’s crotches.”
ranchandsyrup
@Morzer: need new monitor due to spit take. well done. i hope i typed this correctly.
Villago Delenda Est
@Morzer: AKA “an excellent target for target practice”
Morzer
@Villago Delenda Est:
“Slow-moving and well-marbled”.
Kropadope
@Roger Moore: Even Northeast, buddy.
Villago Delenda Est
@SatanicPanic: They love everything about Sharia law except for the Allah stuff, and that’s only because they’re too bone-ignorant to know it’s Arabic for “God”.
Frankensteinbeck
Actually, I think that’s small potatoes. It seems shocking from a political perspective, but it’s a completely standard level of crazy compared to what we’ve experienced. If anything, a slightly reduced level of crazy.
This guy is one of the reasons Romney lost. Not him specifically, but the phenomenon. The world has changed, and if you have officials saying horrible hateful crazy shit, you can’t keep it a secret anymore. They become the face of the party.
FlipYrWhig
@nancy darling: Why the holy fucking hell would you put anything like that on your own campaign website?
Roger Moore
@shelley:
I don’t know. I suspect they want to kill them in as crude and bloody a fashion as they can as a way of proving how much they hate Teh Ghey. Gas chambers would be too clinical.
Botsplainer
BTW, since it is Oklahoma, can we assume that Esk will win in an epic landslide?
Villago Delenda Est
Agreed. I am content to allow them to live their own lives as they see fit, insofar as they make no attempt to impose their values on the rest of us by force of arms or law.
If they attempt to do so, no quarter should be given to them.
jl
I had a hunch that the GOP outreach effort would pick up after Cantor’s defeat.
And, looks like this Bratt guy may have some weaknesses as a candidate. Maybe Jack Trammel has a chance if Brat keeps this up:
Cantor Conquerer Caught Off Guard By Policy Questions In Interview
“Hey, Chuck, I thought we were just going to chat today about the celebratory aspects,” Brat said. “I’d love to go through all of this but my mind is, I love all the policy questions but I just wanted to talk about the victory ahead and I wanted to thank everybody that worked so hard on my campaign. I’m happy to take policy issues at any time, I just wanted to call out a thanks to everybody today.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/david-brat-chuck-todd-minimum-wage-syria
Edit: probably won’t happen, but would be rough justice if Brat won the GOP primary but lost the general. GOP heads would explode themselves in puzzlement and panic.
Waldo
@nancy darling:
I’m guessing Pam’s only option is a restraining order.
SatanicPanic
@Villago Delenda Est: also, an excellent target for gold coin scams
Jay C
BTW, that’s a nice picture, Tom: is the guy on the left (the one holding a hatful of rocks) meant to be a composite portrait of the typical Oklahoma State Legislator?*
*The “hatful of rocks” metaphor seems quite appropriate
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
They hate sharia law because of the competition.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: I suspect Edward II would be the preferred model. They get dead f#gg0ts, and they get to fvck them in the process. Win/win.
I’d like to tag this “/snark” but I’m not sure it isn’t what they really want.
The Thin Black Duke
@FlipYrWhig: Because the blood-thirsty idiot didn’t think it was wrong. Outside of his holier-than-thou bubble, the Real World doesn’t exist.
max
There’s yet a Marianas Trench for these folks to dig.
Yep. And by God, they’re gonna buy themselves some big-ass gas-guzzlin’ tractors to get ‘er done.
Since there’s not going to be any talking the loons out of it, it’s containment time.
max
[‘It’s been containment time.’]
WereBear
Translation: I’m willing for everything to go back to the way it was before!
Villago Delenda Est
You know, even the fucking Nazis ( fuck Godwin’s law) knew enough not to be open about their plans to exterminate the Jews, once they settled on that as the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question”. The entire Vernichtungslager concept was to be self sealing and to leave no trace in the end of what happened, because it was in fact so monstrous.
Our teatards don’t even have THAT much sense..
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
Because you know it’s going to come up one way or the other, and you’d rather get ahead of it than be caught unaware.
boatboy_srq
@jl: When your platform starts and ends with “I’m agin’ the Gubmint,” not having policy positions is feature-not-bug.
Violet
@FlipYrWhig: Here’s more crazy from his campaign website:
Why in the world would he put that kind of stuff on his campaign website?
JPL
Leave the poor guy alone, since he’s just quoting from his bible. Also Brat won his race because of his belief in Judeo-Christian values that our country was founded on. Honestly, why do they include Judeo in their comments. I don’t get cuz they don’t believe it.
Ask Louie Gohmert.
kindness
Teahaddists are having quite the dick swinging contest right now, huh?
Jesus weeps, the FSM just asks us to pass the Parmesan.
Mandalay
Uh-oh….Esk was crazy enough to put his home and cell phone numbers on his campaign web site.
I’m sure the gay community will be phoning him regularly to wish him all the best.
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
That is the core of what they want.
@the Conster:
Exactly. This is about Their Way. It doesn’t matter if your way is 99% the same as theirs. They’re not getting to force you to do things their way.
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yep. Like Romney bitching about the 47%.
Mnemosyne
@boatboy_srq:
My go-to guy on this stuff is Fred Clark at Slacktivist, who rightly points out that the passage that the fundies use to claim they don’t have to follow the dietary laws isn’t about food. It uses food as a metaphor, but it’s about God saying that no people are un-kosher (i.e. anyone can become a Christian, not only Jews), and that’s exactly how Peter interprets it right there on the pages of the Bible.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: “Judeo” came into the formula as a nod to Jews after WWII. It was part of a guilt trip. One that they’re apparently over now.
Violet
@Waldo:
His wife filed two victim protective orders against him in 2007. One was dropped. Legal stuff here.
John (MCCARTHY) Cole
Evil motherfuckers.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: Well, I’m sure that’s the theory, but there are plenty of non-crazy ways to do that, such as “My wife and I are separated but we are both committed to raising our 3 children with love and respect,” blah blah blah. Leave the details out of it, don’t lie, and play it cool. It’s not LiveJournal, it’s your official campaign website.
notoriousJRT
Maybe this will make you feel more hopeful (from my monthly email from Penzeys Spices):
http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/aclu/aclu_landing.html?utm_campaign=ACLU%20email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=http%3A//d31hzlhk6di2h5.cloudfront.net/20140611/08/29/5b/c1/27290342c5f395ceb5a126e7_600x972.jpg
My apologies for being a link dufus.
scav
@Violet: I like the cheap detail that he hedged his cancer bet by invoking God’s help along with the deeply political statement of B-17 dietary richness. Should we alert him that God is usually seen sporting a very suspect long and full muslimy beard?
Bill Arnold
@boatboy_srq:
Reasonably comprehensive list of offenses with an old-testament mandated death penalty here. I’m pretty sure that “cut off from his people” means exile though (last section).
In practice conviction meant 4 male observant jewish witnesses, confessions not admissible. (e.g. private bestiality with no witnesses would not be punishable (human and animal) by death.)
(Usual caveat: I Am Not An Old-Testament Lawyer – IANAOTL)
Villago Delenda Est
@John (MCCARTHY) Cole: Evil is the correct word for these people.
Evil.
Let that sink in.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
I would bet that Esk was wearing a poly-blend shirt when he said this shit.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): STONE HIM! STONE HIM!
JPL
@Mnemosyne: So that’s how they explain it away. Since I lost brain cells listening to the Hagel hearing today, I’m not going to ask anymore questions. I do have some pork that was sitting out in the sunshine for a few days, that I’d be willing to serve them though.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne: If it isn’t about Teh Diet, why is it about Teh Secks? Because there’s a whole lot more about diet in the OT than there is condemning people for who they’re with, and if none of the former stuff matters….
Svensker
@Sandman:
Well, yeah, but that’s kinda how the L.V. shooters thought, KWIM?
SatanicPanic
@Violet:
If you have God’s help, why bother with the Vitamin B17? Is a vitamin more powerful than GOD? BLASPHEMER!
JPL
@Villago Delenda Est: Was that Lindbergh’s idea?
Villago Delenda Est
@boatboy_srq: They can’t stop thinking about the sechs.
Kristin
@nancy darling: Holy crap, that is so creepy.
Kristin
@ranchandsyrup: It just means, “I want the government to tell everyone what to do with their personal lives, but I don’t want to pay any taxes.”
Morzer
@SatanicPanic:
It’s quite simple – he has B17 communion wafers, so when he takes his daily dose, he’s also eating God.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: No, it predates him. It’s actually been around since the early 19th century, but frankly I think it only really got going after WWII.
Naturally, Nietzsche had a different take on the meaning of the term than American fundigelical types do.
boatboy_srq
@scav:
Could we reinterpret that as “we begin bombing their bigoted a##es in five minutes”? Is that wrong?
Violet
His website is a mess. He’s got this blog section and those entries he calls “Freedom Thoughts”. They rotate through at the top of his website, so they’re pretty much the first thing you see when you visit his site. The cancer one was the one that caught my eye. So much crazy.
In his ” Freedom Thought on Marriage and Divorce” he says this:
Wondering if his dalliances with other gentlemen are partly why his marriage fell apart.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne: and @JPL:
But of course, food is only the tiniest beginning of what they ignore. Leviticus is full of rules, and they follow only the ones that let them shit on other people. There’s a huge passage about slavery, and trust me, it has nothing to do with black people.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck:
No, they want to impose those values on everyone else in society, because part of their belief system is that unless they do, they’re going to Hell with the rest of us. We must be “saved” from the fantasy fate in store for “sinners” that is their lodestone.
I’m not willing to indulge that part of their belief system for a nanosecond.
Mandalay
@Violet: Good find! That looks like a really ugly, messy drawn out divorce. He’s still fighting in the divorce court after seven years! That guy needs to sort out his own life before worrying about anyone else.
Mnemosyne
@boatboy_srq:
Short version because I can’t link: Peter had a vision where God laid a huge table full of non-kosher food and told him to eat. Peter, being Peter, refused three times, whereupon God told him that nothing is forbidden unless He says so. Peter then heard a knock on his door — it was a Roman (Gentile) who wanted to become a Christian. Peter interpreted this as God telling him that everyone would be welcome to become a Christian.
Fundies interpret this story as God telling Peter that no food was forbidden and ignore Peter’s interpretation. Therefore, to them the story is about God removing the dietary restrictions laid out in Leviticus, but everything else in Leviticus is still operational because they know God’s will better than an actual apostle.
Violet
From the “10 Planks” of his Platform:
Roger Moore
@boatboy_srq:
Why do you need to reinterpret it? The dude is talking about the wonders of Laetrile- the more commonly known name for vitamin B-17- which ought to tell you everything you need to know.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not just fundies that take Peter’s Dream to refer to God withdrawing kosher restrictions on food. Pretty much all Christian denominations have gone down that path over time, possibly because of the Satanic allure of bacon sandwiches.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne: I’ve studied with these idjits, so this fever-dream isn’t unknown to me. It still doesn’t explain why they aren’t selling their daughters (for a fair and reasonable price), stoning adulteresses, marrying their brothers’ widows, sacrificing live farm animals in church, etc etc. Because if only the dietary bits are “off the table”, then all the rest is still “on” it – and yet there’s but one or two verses out of the whole first five books that they still pay attention to. The food thing is just particularly…. um, delicious.
EDIT: This isn’t the only time they’ve convinced themselves they know better than Apostles. Ask one of them to list the Beatitudes: the confusion on their faces is quite revealing.
Baud
@Violet:
The FDA is shoving their regulations down our throats!
Violet
No surprise that his main employers have been the government. US Postal Service and the Department of Public Safety. Teabaggers love that government money. LinkedIn.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: Maybe the bloodthirst Esk exhibits had rubbed off a bit – but wingnuttery cured by Flying Fortresses had a certain appeal.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
You mean he needs to remove the beam from his own eye so he can see clearly to remove the mote from his brother’s eye? I don’t know who would make that kind of suggestion.
bemused
@JPL:
I heard just a bit of that hearing on the car radio, gone all day, and heard a Republican being incredibly rude and nasty to Hagel which seems to be their usual behavior in hearings. Then I read about Gohmert obsessed with whether the minister thought non-Christians will burn in hell. These people are sadists and not fit for society.
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen that argument. I’ve only seen them judge the other person, and if it ever reflects on themselves, only that it makes them better to not be that horrible sinner. This guy does mention the ‘calamities’, but when that has come up traditionally – like New Orleans being drowned for tolerating gays – the framing has always been explicitly that the judging person is totally free, and God is hurting the gays. Like whether or not their policies work in the real world, innocent bystanders are a concept that does not exist for them.
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore: WIN.
indycat32
According to google, B-17 is laetrile
Morzer
@Roger Moore:
A Commie liberal with a controlling wood-fetish?
Applejinx
B17? I think he means he eats bombers. And not just that…
Admonish me next! Me. Admonish me harder! :D
Ain’t his finger that’s lifting…
Mandalay
@Violet:
I am insulted that he thinks he has the responsibility of telling us whether a cock in a man’s body is good for us or not.
Wally Ballou
@Villago Delenda Est:
And one that many of them weren’t ever entirely on board with at any rate.
“It is interesting at great political rallies how you have a Protestant to pray and a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friends, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah? It is blasphemy.”
– Bailey Smith, then-SBC President, at a Religious Roundtable national-affairs briefing on August 22, 1980. A classic gaffe, in the Kinsley sense of the term.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: Even when I was a kid that metaphor struck me as very poorly constructed. Like, who is going to be walking around with a log in their eye and not notice? If I had one in my eye I wouldn’t be ignoring it. That’s not even halfway plausible.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
There’s also the whole bit in Matthew 15, where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for complaining about his followers not washing their hands before eating. He makes a big point that it’s the words we speak that defile us, not the things we eat. While he’s talking about the law commanding people to wash before eating, I think a lot of Christians see that as a generic rebuke to the complex dietary law in general.
Violet
From the divorce court proceedings, he’s kind of a mess. He was required to be supervised to visit his kids:
That went on for awhile and was mentioned several times. He had to take anger management classes:
And again a few years later:
He tried to claim he was indigent to get out of paying for parenting classes:
Required to go for Psychological Evaluation:
Guess he wanted to give the kids the B-17:
It goes on. It’s kind of sad. It also mentions No Corporal Punishment quite a few times. Guess that was a problem.
StringOnAStick
@AndoChronic: Ando, if the military is sending you to grad school, try to stick it out – you don’t need the kind of debt that racks up otherwise, and you’ve got plenty of years of service that says you deserve the help!
I know what you are saying about the military being un-friendly to liberals. I have a few friends who stayed in long enough to fulfill their “it paid for college” obligations; they said that 16 years ago it was about 25% liberals, most of whom kept their heads down in order to survive. Now that Rush is on Armed Forces Radio with no opposing voices, I suspect that ratio is even lower. I sympathize with what you are experiencing; it can’t be easy. Does being in grad school grant you enough distance from the mess?
StringOnAStick
@indycat32: B-17 is laetrile? As in “apricot pit-derived super cancer fighter from the 1970’s that never went anywhere other than into supplements? Well, that explains the “apricots can cure cancer” crapola I heard from a wingnut yesterday.
Villago Delenda Est
@Morzer: Ummmm….bacon!
nancy darling
@Violet: I’m starting to feel sorry for those three boys.
Violet
Sounds like he’s quite the dad:
Violet
@nancy darling: Yeah, it’s pretty sad. Tragic, even. The dad sounds like a mess and who knows about the mom. The poor kids are caught in the middle of it. Even the court saw that:
Wally Ballou
@Morzer: Yes, very amusing, but maybe-pretty-please we could dispense with the gratuitous fatty-bashing?
Besides, Esk is a skinny dude, actually.
Morzer
@Wally Ballou:
Dude, it’s a joke about “heavily” libertarian, not an attack on fat people. Please, think about it.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
It’s hyperbole, and a reasonably used.
muddy
@SatanicPanic: But these people are so stupid they would totally walk around with a log in their eye, whining all the time that it’s the fault of the people with the mote for “starting it”.
imonlylurking
That divorce document is enlightening. Anger Management classes, parenting classes, supervised visitation-if this is his idea of a frivolous divorce, I don’t think I want to know what a non-frivolous divorce would be.
Mike in NC
Some day this creep will fill Tom Coburn’s seat in the US Senate. Bank on it.
scav
At least this is heterosexual, traditional, bible-based familial violence of the non-frivolous sort? Something along those lines? Is there a secret see-no-hypocrisy set of glasses they hand out to true-believers?
imonlylurking
RESPONDENT ORDERED NOT TO ADMINISTER ANY FOOD SUPPLEMENTS OR ADDITIVES TO THE CHILDREN. ORDER PRESENTED.
Violet
@imonlylurking: His “divorce” has been going on since 2007. He says he doesn’t believe in divorce and is trying to reconcile with his wife. That’s seven years of misery. Normal people would just finalize the divorce and move on. Even Republicans got the divorce and moved on–Gingrich, et al. He’s seriously a True Believer.
Roger Moore
@imonlylurking:
Adultery. That’s the only thing that Jesus says is grounds for divorce.
Violet
@imonlylurking: Yep. I highlighted that one above. I bet he was trying to give the kids some of the crazy supplements he believes in. His cancer post is full of alternative medicine woo. I like the mention of the “Moss Report” that you can get for $200, which “objectively” reports on success rates of various alternative cancer clinics. Sure, they’re full of objectivity while they take your $200 from you for their report.
JustRuss
@Long Tooth:
Sadly, hate of and willingness to kill the other is hardly limited to the South. Just ask a few Native Americans. Heck, Oregon’s constitution prohibited immigration by blacks until 1927. Of course, most of us aren’t pining to return to those years….
JustRuss
@Violet: So Brat doesn’t even know if Log Cabin Republicans actually exist? My God, these people really are proud of their ignorance, 10 seconds on teh Google machine would answer that for him.
Violet
@JustRuss: No, not Brat. That’s from Scott Esk’s campaign website.
Heliopause
Not a good example. Jesus spared the woman’s life and sent her on her way but implored her to “sin no more,” the clear implication being that God’s forgiveness is contingent upon a good faith effort to cease the behavior going forward. Hence, gays are engaging in behavior for which they need forgiveness.
Hob
@Heliopause: “the clear implication being that God’s forgiveness is contingent upon a good faith effort to cease the behavior going forward”
That’s irrelevant to the reason Tom pointed to that story, which was that the idiot is talking about stoning people to death for their sins. Regardless of what is or is not implied about God’s forgiveness, Jesus did not tell the crowd that their authority to stone the woman depended on whether she had made “a good faith effort.” He said they all are sinners and therefore, no matter what they think she did wrong, they don’t get to cast stones.
If you’re saying that Tom, by citing that story, is wrongly implying that homosexuality is a sin, you’re missing the point. Esk professes to be a Christian, and Esk thinks homosexuality is a sin. It’s entirely appropriate to point him to a text that is sacred to that faith, which tells him explicitly to forget what he read in Leviticus.
AndoChronic
@StringOnAStick: Thanks for your sympathy. Grad. school does in fact distance me considerably but I do still really like the military and the benefits of staying in are one of the best things going these days, for now. Also, I would really like to stay considering my degree program is towards an LPCC (Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor), combined with my LADC (License Alcohol & Drug Counselor) I think I could really help our vets. I really want to stay in the circle for the folks but some of the vitriol is getting way too far over the top for even the “professional” environment of the military.
drkrick
There’s absolutely nothing unbiblical about letting Pam go and living out his life alone. Doesn’t fit in with the misogynistic trainwreck he confuses with an “understanding of the Bible on marriage and divorce” though.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Heliopause:
This passage isn’t about forgiveness, it’s about a bunch of limp dicks who are trying to play games with Jesus: “Hey, fuck you, Jesus, here’s this broad we caught screwing around, and Mosaic Law says we are supposed to throw rocks at her until she dies! So, dude, WTF? We should kill her, right? Cause if you don’t agree, we’re gonna rack your ass for being a JINO.” Jesus hung out, and said, “Well, okay guys, but the first guy to throw a rock has to be someone who never, ever did anything against the Law.” Jesus hung out some more, then looked around to find that he was alone with the woman. “Where the hell did everybody go?” Jesus asked. “No one tossed a rock at you?” When the woman said “No, I’m still in one piece,” Jesus said, “Well, I’m not throwing rocks at you either, get lost. And don’t do anymore shit that’s going to get you fucked up by a bunch of limp dick assholes, kthxbai.”
In other words, it’s not about forgiveness being conditional upon future performance; it’s more about the need for justice to be tempered with mercy, and the need for those who judge to understand that humans fuck up sometimes. And its also about limp dicks playing games with outmoded religious doctrine. You know. Tea Nuts.
Heliopause
@Hob:
Oh, I quite understand his point, it’s you who are missing mine.
Proponents of hippie Jesus foolishly think they can out-argue their opponents by selectively choosing biblical stories and truncating the content for convenience. That is, by doing exactly as they do. As Jesus himself aptly pointed out, they have their reward.
The story of the Woman Taken in Adultery is unambiguous that adultery is a sin. Hence, if this story is instructive in understanding the Esk story, homosexuals are sinners, pathetic, deserving of sympathy, and needing forgiveness. I trust none of us here believe such a thing. You can make this problem go away if you edit the story to taste. Just as your opponents do.
There are parts of the Bible that say you shouldn’t execute people for sexual transgressions. There are parts of the Bible that say you should. If you play the selective Bible quote game with the likes of Scott Esk you are playing on his home turf. I don’t recommend that.
satby
And while Eck sucks the air out of the room, a Tea bagger comrade from Indiana says that “no one has the guts to let the poor wither and die”
and Louie Gohmert tells a minister he’s slacking on the job of converting the heathens
Now I know there’s no such thing as peak wingnut, it’s an infinately renewing resource.
cmorenc
Well, I’m also in favor of gay people getting stoned. Some good bubble gum diesel ought to do it.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Heliopause: Well, the story about the woman taken in adultery is regarded by most authorities as a late edition to John’s Gospel, and while most modern translations include it, many set it off with brackets or otherwise note that it isn’t part of the earliest texts of John. So should we just go ahead and discount this little story as “made up shit that was tacked on?”
Brick head
The Bible says the punishment for divorce is stoning of the wife. The Bible also does not have any penalty for homosexuals.
Villago Delenda Est
You know, I think you can be a Christian, or you can be a libertarian. You can’t be both. Well, you can be an American “Christian” and be a libertarian, but Jesus is not who you follow.
Mammon is.
Morzer
@Heliopause:
So what is exactly is your home turf here? And how do you know so much about Scott Esk’s intellectual capacity?
Mnemosyne
@Heliopause:
I’m pretty sure the point of the story is that we are all sinners and shouldn’t presume to judge the sins of others. The fact that people like Ecks deliberately miss the point by being overly literal has been noted in this thread already.
ETA: Also, I disagree on the merits of arguing Bible verses with wingnuts, because I once won an argument with one by pointing out that the Bible says faith without works was dead and shouldn’t he be volunteering at a homeless shelter instead of proselytizing?
Chris
@Violet:
This.
He goes on to say that “in Biblical law, this was okay. And I do support Biblical law.” That part should be trumpeted far and wide. Far too many of these assholes are allowed to hide behind their belief in the Bible or the Founding Fathers in a way that makes them seem quaint and old-fashioned but essentially harmless and well meaning.
Please, fill the airwaves with this just to remind everyone exactly what euphemisms like “Biblical morality” actually mean. (Doesn’t matter whether or not their reading of the Bible is accurate. The point is, it’s what they mean by it).
Chris
@SatanicPanic:
It’s worse than that. The irony is that their “outreach” to gays in the last ten years has mostly consisted of saying “oh YEAH? Well in MUSLIM countries you’d have it even WORSE, they’d STONE you to death!” As with all things conservative, the fact that someone, somewhere, is worse than them is proof that they’re friggin humanitarians.
Except apparently not everyone got the memo.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
I always thought the awkward “Judeo-Christian” formulation was a nod to the fact that Catholics and Jews “became white” in America in the mid-20th century, rather than specifically a reaction to World War Two.
(Before that, the nativists would’ve simply said “Christian” nation, with the perfectly well understood implication that Catholics weren’t Christian).
Matt McIrvin
@Heliopause:
Liberal Christians do this because it’s their home turf, and they don’t believe the likes of Scott Esk are entitled to claim sole ownership. I’m not a Christian so I leave them to it, but I think it’s a reasonable attitude.
B
@Violet: it’s always horrible and sad to read domestic cases, so, readers be warned, but looks like some of the worst of it is here : http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/GetCaseInformation.asp?submitted=true&viewtype=caseGeneral&casemasterID=390117&db=Cleveland
Multiple contempt hearings, restraining orders, husband Esk ordered to attend multiple anger management classes, supervised visitation, … and at least at one point, Wife Esk was making over 72,000 / year and H Esk only 12,000. .??
B
@SatanicPanic: that might have been part of Jesus’ point.
B
@B: o, I see violet did it first and made a much better job of it than I did by linking
Sondra
I have read several of these Scientific papers and have concluded that we are experiencing the effects of both of these conditions at the same time.
It’s fascinating stuff and scary as hell because this is our Government on stupid. It’s worse than Derp: which is sort of benign dumb. I have no word to describe it but if I did I’d start spreading a meme a.s.a.p.
Maybe someone here can come up with a term and we could all start spreading a new meme.
The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)
By ERROL MORRIS
June 20, 2010, 9:00 pm
Anosognosiacs have a real condition, paralysis, but they are not aware of it because of a neural disconnect in their brains.
and..
The Dunning/Kruger Effect is a psychological condition which could be overcome with some effort except that people who have it aren’t aware that they have it: therefore they do not detect a problem.
Therefore Anosognia + the Dunning/Kruger Effect = “real life Anosognia”. Which means that people believe what they want to believe and cannot change the way they make decisions because they literally cannot detect a problem.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/?
snip
As Dunning read through the article, a thought washed over him, an epiphany. If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.
snip
As Dunning read through the article, a thought washed over him, an epiphany. If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.
Dunning wondered whether it was possible to measure one’s self-assessed level of competence against something a little more objective — say, actual competence. Within weeks, he and his graduate student, Justin Kruger, had organized a program of research. Their paper, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties of Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-assessments,” was published in 1999.[3]
Dunning and Kruger argued in their paper, “When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the erroneous impression they are doing just fine.”
It became known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence. But just how prevalent is this effect? In search of more details, I called David Dunning at his offices at Cornell:
Sondra
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Roger Moore: One of my former girlfriends chose this as her method dealing with her cancer.
It didn’t work, and now she’s dead.
seaboogie
I am beginning to think that “American Exceptionalism” means that we are exceptionally stupid and ignorant, and sometimes just plain willfully “whack”. Anyone care to disagree? That any of these nut-jobs has a voice in the greatest country of all of God’s time (yes, snark), is simply a mystery to me. Except we always have to sell some stuff, so let’s make up a whole news network whose only goal is to get people so pissed off and scared that they are buying guns and gold all the day long….