This morning, I received this email from someone who has been following the Georgia prostitution case I commented on last night.

Hey man, I’m a longtime BHT lurker and Georgia resident. This might be relevant to the discussion:

I’m following the bill through the process for a class at Georgia State, and I was there at Lobby Day as the bill was announced. Some good discussion was had regarding the opposition, and some friends of mine actually got to talk to some of them.

The argument they made was that “This is just like when we made birth control legal, and girls started getting pregnant more often, because now it was ‘okay’.” I am not making that up. Literally all of the objections I’ve heard come from either 1. Either not reading the bill, or doing so and lying about what’s in it. Or 2. Disliking the bill because it seeks to help, rather than punish, these boys and girls.

And to the points some others made, it’s important to remember that the lady with the “volunteer”  quote may just be a “watchblogger” but in Georgia, being an awful person who hates children and will use Jesus to get political power doesn’t put you out of the mainstream-it gives you power within it. She may be a wing-nut, but she can still cause a ton of damage. Already the Senator sponsoring the bill is having to work out a compromise with these groups.

That said, it was heartening to see so many middle-aged white folks from various churches coming out in support of the bill-hopefully one day they’ll be seen as the face of Christianity,but right now, Deadwyler and her ilk are hogging that status. (I obviously didn’t mean to exclude others. Just that typically middle aged white christians aren’t who you expect to see supporting such things, and it’s good. In fact, there was amazing diversity present, which was really cool.)

Sigh. People ask me why I’m not Baptist anymore. It’s simple: I converted to Christianity.

Glad you guys are talking about it, and hope this was useful. If you need to, you can read the bill itself here. It’s uncharacteristically short. And I’ll be blogging about it here.

Thanks, and blessings in Jesus,
Doug

You can follow his blog here.

This isn’t just another example of “right wing nut job christians” making an ass out of them selves. This is evil and wickedness in our current time and place and people under the name of Jesus are trying to keep change from occurring!

If we don’t stand up, call evil out, and work toward the restoration of all things that Jesus is gonna complete who will? Who is gonna defend the name of Jesus if not you and I? Or are we content to let people think that Jesus and his people are ok with keeping the victim enslaved and letting wickedness fill the earth?

Dear God, I know it’s been a few years since you did the whole “I will smiteth thee” thing (unless Pat Robertson is right… well, we wont go there…), but do you think you could go all Old Testament on these jackass douche bags?

Thoughts in a Haystack: Georgia On My Mind … and Out of Its. (ht to Harmless Anarchist over at the BHT)

“Hey guys, I got an idea: how about instead of defending and fighting for the little girls caught up in sex trade and slavery in our area we go ahead and make sure they know they a criminals… you know to ’scare them straight’.  Ya, that’ll solve the problems of 12 yr olds wanting to get into whoring. Gotta teach them it’s not a good career path.”

Ya, cause that’s WWJD and all…

I cannot even express how furious this makes me. I want to punch each and every one of these bastards in the throat. It makes me sick to think that people who clam to follow Jesus not only refuse to fight against sexual slavery and the abuse of young children but also want to criminalize them for the abuse they have suffered.

This is evil. This is how I know humanity is broken and wretched to the core.

Oh God that you would break the teeth of the wicked…

Little Miss Perfect: Pageant Parents Go Way Too Far – MamaPop™.com.

Please stop telling your daughter that she is only valuable for her looks, performance, and sexuality. Your just going to make her into another vapid, neurotic mess that is “past her prime” as a junior in college.

Sure, little girls like to dress up, show off, and be the center of attention. That’s part of allot of kids development into self identifying persons. But for an adult to exploit such an innocent norm is perversion at it’s finest. For the parent of the child to exploit it… there is a special place in hell for such evil, and Hitler is glad he didn’t end up there.

What ever happened to protecting our sons and daughters? When did we stop nurturing them and start treating them as show dogs, little pets to do tricks and show off for us. In actuality, you are just showing off your own neurosis and shallow self identity.

Get some therapy, and let your child be a kid.

Melinda Tankard Reist » Blog Archive » Women blindfolded and gagged: the latest in men’s fashion from Roger David.

When I was at the height of my teen awesome/angst (the ’90’s), there was this trend in fashion called ‘heroin chic‘. Advertisers, fashion designers, and wanna be glamor elite everywhere decided that looking like you were coming off a 3 week bender and being skin and bones thin was going to be the new uber attractive. This look (despite being just gross) finally faded from pop culture only after quite a few heroin overdose of celebrity figures.

Who ever thought this was a good idea needs to be slapped around by Skeletor for a few hours. Deciding that it’s desirable to look like a drug ravished, intervention needing, skeleton is still having effects in our culture.

This morning, Nic passed on this article via the twitter. Apparently, one “designer” thinks it’s awesome to put images and slogans invoking (and possibly promoting) rape and sexual assault on his shirts.

Really? You really think this is a good idea?

You know what else would be awesome on a tee shirt? How about some good ol’ boys lynching a negro? Or how about a sniper shooting people as they fill up there gas tank? Or how about John Wane Gacy sitting down to his dinner of a human leg?

Ya, someone would have to be pretty sick to think that any of these ideas were worth promoting in fashion/pop culture, even in an ‘ironic’ sense.

Truth is, evil in the world needs to be called out, called the evil that it is. It needs to be confronted, not laughed into comfort.

Spreading sexual crime images in the name of fashion is as evil as any excuse people make up for rape (it’s her fault, she wanted it, i’m just a guy that got carried away…). It’s all pure bullshit.

And, in the same way heroin chic has influinced a generation and the next, if we don’t get vocal, visual, and loud about this, the idea that sexual assult, rape, and sexual crimes of all sorts are funny is going to influince future generations.

Fuck that noise.

Related:

• An open letter to Roger David @My Bottles Up

I’m gonna eat this box!

Remnants of Portland’s snowpocalypse ‘09