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According to Pastor Morecraft, the consequences of being a “foolish person who is unwilling to live by the Word of God” is to “become a slave of somebody who is godly and who is wise.”
Pastor Joe Morecraft’s theocratic vision of building a Christian nation is one more reason why freedom-loving Americans must vigilantly guard our cherished Separation of Church and State.Aaand this is why my black family has been feeling increasingly isolated from the white Christian figureheads in the past few years with all these racist, ignorant things coming from their mouths.
That quote, wow…
(Source: rhrealitycheck.org, via stfueverything)
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High Resolution -
Liberals Are Cool: Report: Catholic laundries enslaved women and girls in Ireland as recently as 1996
After more than seven decades of exploitation and a 10-year struggle for justice, Ireland on Tuesday admitted its role in the enslavement of thousands of women and girls in the notorious Magdalene Laundry system, but stopped short of issuing a formal apology from the government.
Labelled the…
(Source: rawstory.com, via thereisnogod)
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High ResolutionFormer sex trafficking victim shines light on dark underworld of Super Bowl
Feb. 1 2013
Amid the parties and fun of Super Bowl 2013, authorities say, there is a dark underworld of girls and women being forced into the sex trade. Sitting in the festive lobby of a New Orleans hotel, festooned with San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens decorations, Clemmie Greenlee, a former victim of sex trafficking from Nashville, recalled being brought to cities around the South to prostitute for those attending such large-scale events.
For Greenlee’s pimps, the influx of people provided a massive money-making opportunity.
“When they come to these kinds of events, the first thing you’re told is how many you’re gonna perform a day,” she said Friday. “You’ve got to go through 25 men a day, or you’re going through 50 of them. When they give you that number, you better make that number.”
Having been abducted and gang-raped by her captors at age 12, Greenlee said, she was one of about eight girls controlled by a ring of pimps, men who injected them with heroin and, at times, kept them handcuffed to beds. For trying to run away, she was once stabbed in the back.
Now 53, Greenlee works at Eden House in Uptown New Orleans, the first shelter for sex-trafficking victims in Louisiana; the center opened in October 2012.
“If you don’t make that number (of sex customers), you’re going to dearly, dearly, severely pay for it,” Greenlee said. “I mean with beatings, I mean with over and over rapings. With just straight torture. The worst torture they put on you is when they make you watch the other girl get tortured because of your mistake.”
Sex and Super Bowls
In the past year, authorities in Louisiana have been working to raise awareness about the rampant sex trafficking that has historically accompanied the Super Bowl. While there is a widespread perception that human trafficking is a problem only in foreign countries, data from the U.S. Department of Justice show the average American prostitute begins working between the ages of 12 and 14.
Established in 2006, the Louisiana Human Trafficking Task Force, comprised of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, plus faith-based and nongovernmental organizations, has been meeting regularly to try to increase trafficking arrests and rescue the victims.
As a tourist destination, New Orleans attracts sex workers year-round, said Bryan Cox, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in New Orleans. But many of those young women are not here by choice. So, in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, both outreach and undercover efforts have ramped up.
Those efforts have paid off to some degree already. As of Thursday, at least eight men had been booked with sex trafficking and five female victims had been rescued from their clutches, Cox said, noting that such cases are investigated jointly by the New Orleans Police Department, State Police, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, among others.
Two of the women, ages 21 and 24, were brought to Covenant House, a homeless shelter for young people at the edge of the French Quarter, according to executive director James Kelly. After taking a shower and spending the night, however, the women left without accepting the services Kelly and others were trying to offer them.
“We believe they went back to turning tricks,” Kelly said. “We did our best to try to care for them and try to get them to stay, but they were 21 and 24, and there was no way we could force them to stay, and neither could the FBI.”
Such behavior is common, Greenlee said, noting that she had repeatedly returned to her captors after stays in the hospital or jail, mainly out of fear. She said many times, the women are brainwashed; they believe they have no other options, no future to pursue.
“They’re terrified,” she said. “You can say you’re going to save us, you can say we don’t have to worry about the pimps no more. We already know what power they have shown us. So either you come back to them, or you find out two days later they either got your grandmother or they just broke your little baby’s arm.
“There’s no such thing as we want to go back to these guys,” she said. “We do not feel that no one — not even the law — can protect us, and we do not want to die. I’d rather live in that misery and pain than to die.”
Messages on bars of soap
Aside from police sting operations, advocacy groups and local police agencies have been trying to combat the problem by handing out pamphlets to local hotel concierges, bartenders and club bouncers, asking them to be on the lookout for women who appear fearful and show signs of being controlled by the men they’re with. One of the signs a woman is being trafficked is that she is not allowed to speak for herself, advocates say.
Some groups have been handing out to hotels bars of soap that have a sex trafficking hotline phone number on them, hoping that women who are desperate to escape will see the number on the soap bar and take a chance on a phone call that could save them. Other groups have been providing strip clubs with posters that urge people to call in tips.
For Greenlee, her chance at a turnaround came from a similar help card in Nashville. Having run away from her captors in her 30s, she said, they did not chase after her because she had “aged out.” Living in an abandoned house in Nashville, shooting heroin with other junkies and prostituting herself, she had lost all hope of a normal life.
But one woman, a former sex worker who knew Greenlee and had graduated from Magdalene House, a safe house program in Nashville — the philosophy of which Eden House was based on — visited Greenlee almost weekly. She would leave little cards with the Magdalene House telephone number on them. But having given up, Greenlee shunned the woman and her cards.
After about five months of cards piling up, one day Greenlee woke up and realized she needed to take the chance. She was 42 years old. “I went to the phone and I pulled out some of them 99 pieces of paper that girl had left.
“The one thing I had in my head was, ‘If I learn how to live and heal, I can get back and get those girls. I can go back and tell people what they do to us,’” she said. “I’m not ashamed of what done happened to me. I don’t care if I never get a husband. It just don’t make no sense that we had to go through this.”
“It’s not as easy as saying, ‘Call this number, escape,’” said Kara Van De Carr, executive director of Eden House. “But women who have hit rock bottom and realize they’re going to die in that lifestyle will try anything to get out.”
Authorities urge those who suspect trafficking to contact local police or the Department of Homeland Security at 1.866.347.2423. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center also staffs a toll-free 24-hour hotline at 888-373-7888.
(via ikenbot)
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"…nuanced biblical attacks on American slavery faced rough going precisely because they were nuanced. This position could not simply be read out of any one biblical text; it could not be lifted directly from the page. Rather, it needed patient reflection on the entirety of the Scriptures; it required expert knowledge of the historical circumstances of ancient Near Eastern and Roman slave systems as well as of the actually existing conditions in the slave states; and it demanded that sophisticated interpretative practice replace a commonsensically literal approach to the sacred text. In short, this was an argument of elites requiring that the populace defer to its intellectual betters. As such, it contradicted democratic and republican intellectual instincts. In the culture of the United States, as that culture had been constructed by three generations of evangelical Bible believers, the nuanced biblical argument was doomed."
- Mark Noll (via azspot)Gotta love how God apparently had to encrypt this basic moral imperative, into some riddles and allegories which would only be deciphered by people with enough historical perspective and education, centuries after the practice had already caused the abject suffering of countless people. Maybe in the Ten Commandments He could have made room for a simple “Thou shalt not own other people as property”.
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"So when I say that religion poisons everything, I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity. It says we can’t be moral without big brother. Without totalitarian permission. We can’t be good to one another without this. We must be afraid. We must also be forced to love someone who we fear. The essence of sadomasochism. The essence of abjection. The essence of master and slave relationship. I say that this is evil."
- Christopher Hitchens -
The atheist who does good deeds is worse than the one who kills his mother and takes care of dogs
Praise be to Allaah.
It is the matter of common sense that man has been created, and the created being must have a Creator. The Creator of man is Allaah, Who created the heavens and the earth, and created all things. Man has to acknowledge this reality. It is also the matter of common sense that the Creator of this universe is the One who deserves to be worshipped, obeyed, feared, hoped and loved. This means that the one who does not acknowledge this truth is an atheist and a denier, and is ignorant and corrupt; his intellect is less than human.
Whoever does not submit truly as a slave to Allaah, Who has created the heavens and the earth, but is too proud to worship Him, or worships some created being alongside Him, is refusing to worship Allaah, or is a mushrik (one who associates others in worship with Him). Both the one who refuses to worship Allaah and the one who associates others in worship with Him are kaafirs (disbelievers), like atheists and deniers. Whoever denies the Creator or refuses to worship Him, or joins others in worship with Him, deserves the most severe punishment, because for a man to deny his Creator, or refuse to worship Him, or join others in worship with Him, is the most serious of human sins, the most abhorrent of beliefs and the worst deviation.
If a person is like this, there is no value in any good deed that he does. The atheist who does deeds that are good in his own eyes, and does whatever good deeds he can for his society, is like a man who kills his father and mother and takes good care of dogs. Does it not make sense that he should be punished and that his good treatment of dogs should not count for anything? The most important rights are the rights of Allaah, which are that He should be acknowledged and worshipped. The one who neglects this most important right will not benefit from anything he does with regard to people’s rights.
Therefore if the atheist does not believe in Allaah and does not worship Allaah, there cannot be any good in the actions that he does for people’s benefit. But this atheist or mushrik who treats people well is still better than the atheist or mushrik who oppresses and mistreats people, and denies them their rights. He may be rewarded for his good deeds by being granted provision of food and drink in this world, but he will have no share in the Hereafter. Look at yourself, and believe in Allaah and His Messenger, and follow the guidance of Allaah with which He sent His Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), the Seal of the Prophets, so that you might avoid the punishment of Allaah. Know the difference between the believer and the atheist, the one who worships Allaah alone and the one who associates others in worship with Him. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“The likeness of the two parties is as the blind and the deaf and the seer and the hearer. Are they equal when compared? Will you not then take heed? [Hood 11:24]
Source: Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahmaan al-BarraakIt is not often that I come across a non-troll post that is so off-the-wall bonkers that it does not deserve the dignity of a reply. Actually, this is so off-the-wall bonkers that I can’t even get mad at it; in fact, it’s rather entertaining. Just, well, you know, I feel it necessary to give you an obligatory fuck you, but still, have a great day. :)
~ Steve
Islam, you guys!
You were created specifically to be a slave, on your knees for the celestial dictator, or any terrestrial dictator that claims to represent Him.
Btw, notice how many words OP used to say absolutely nothing. Such is theology.
(Source: onething4sure)
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Southern Slavery As It Was: The Bible as Engine of Extremism
As I’ve said in the past, the Bible unmistakably approves of slavery. Most Christians shy away from this point, but there are some who don’t, such as the two Christian ministers Doug Wilson and Steve Wilkins. In their extended essay “Southern Slavery As It Was”, they argue that African slavery in the pre-Civil War American South was a gentle and beneficial institution, and that most black people preferred being enslaved to being free. They say that the abolition of slavery was when society started going downhill; that ending slavery was what paved the way for a whole host of further sins, such as granting equal rights to women and gay people. (More background info.)
(Source: azspot)
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A Glance at the 1851 Book Bible Defence of Slavery
Reader Verimius alerted me to this 1851 book called Bible Defence of Slavery byJosiah Priest.
As you can imagine, it’s critical of abolitionists and offers Biblical reasons to support slavery — all before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, of course.
And it’s full of gems worth quoting to anyone who says the Bible was never used to support slavery, like this one from page 558:
If you get a chance, look through the book and leave any other interesting excerpts in the comments below.
Originally from Friendly Atheist blog (no relation to this tumblr)
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Another Republican Rep. defends slavery, calls President Lincoln a 'Marxist'
“If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861? The South has always stood by the Constitution and limited government. When one attacks the Confederate Battle Flag, he is certainly denouncing these principles of government as well as Christianity.”
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High ResolutionLegal Fiction
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The Bible, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
If you want to know how hard to beat your slaves (Exodus 21:20-21), determine a price for you virgin daughter (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) or cast demons out of men and into pigs (Matthew 8:28-34) the bible is the authoritative book, hands down.
But if you need to know how to do things like cure a disease, predict a hurricane or build a safe bridge, you’ll need some science.
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Just got home after an engagement service. the most sexist and bigoted event i’ve ever been to. this was in their hymn book:
follow for the best atheist posts on tumblrSlave owner to slave: Do it all for Jesus! And don’t think about any more.
(via atheist-overdose)
Divine Irony
is a rich archive of religious delusions, scientific truths and political implications.
"Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
-George Carlin
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”.
-Albert Einstein
