Today In Christian Love: Women Who Have Sex Before Marriage Are 'Filthy Dishrags'

At Lancaster Baptist Church in California, one of those mega-churches — because a sign that you truly love God is to attend services with 5,000 devotees — Pastor Paul Chappell decided to tackle the issue of premarital sex, asking:

"One wonders, whatever happened to purity?"

Interesting topic, I thought, though clearly a topic more suited to America circa 1957 than America in 2014, but, you know, whatever. But then the not-so-good pastor went a step further, and wondered about the women who engage in premarital sex, calling the “filthy dishrags.”

"Whatever happened to that? Whatever happened to the days when girls said, 'I'm not going to be touched by every guy? I'm not going to walk down the aisle like a filthy dishrag on my wedding day.' Whatever happened to that day?"

I kina wondered what he thought about men who engaged in premarital sex. I imagine, Chappell thinks they’re real men, high fiving one another because they just boned their girlfriend or something. But Chappell doesn’t seem to realize that the women he calls filthy dishrags are having sex with men, so why no name-calling for the masculine gender?

He says his rant, and name-calling, was spurred on by criticism of his church's purity pledge:

“There is a standard in this church that the dresses are going to come down to the knee when a lady stands up here. They call me old-fashioned ... I’ve counseled too many men to know that if we don’t have everything covered just right they’re not going to be thinking about wonderful grace and Jesus.”

And some men in the crowd actually shouted "amen" to that, though I wonder how many filthy dishrags those men had gotten into during their lives. Before their wedding day; heck, maybe some of these men even married the filthy dishrag though why one would ever buy the cow … yada yada yada.

Chappell also ranted about the way women dress, especially at wedding and funerals:

“I get so sick and tired of going to weddings and, it’s the bride’s day, and here’s some Jezebel with hardly any clothes on strutting around the wedding, Look – you come to a wedding around here, show some respect to the bride. You go to a funeral ... women do the exact same thing. You come to the house of God, it ought not to be a flesh show!”

But Pastor, how are the men in your congregation ever gonna find that good woman if they don’t go through a Baker’s Dozen or so of those half-dressed filthy dishrags shaking their groove thangs on the dance floor at a wedding; or, I would imagine, bending over provocatively at the buffet after the funeral.

Pastor Chappell needs to wake up and quit shaming women for premarital sex because, as I said, unless these women are having battery-operated sex, or having girl-on-girl sex, then there are an awful  lot of men out there dirtying up the dishrags without fear of reprisal from Chappell's pulpit.

via NCRM

Lincoln University President Robert Jennings Blames Women For Rape

Stories of sexual assault on college campuses have been all over the news lately, especially with regards to college athletes who sexually assault women being given a kind of pass because, you know, football … or basketball … money. But, Robert Jennings, president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, says we cannot blame the rapists, but we should sometimes blame the women because they ask for it.

"Men treat you — treat women — the way women allow us to treat them. When it comes time to make that final decision, we’re going to go down the hall and marry that girl with the long dress on.  And let me tell you why I know I’m right about it. I’m right about it because we had on this campus last semester, three cases of young women, who after having done whatever they did with the young men, and then it didn’t turn out the way they wanted it to turn out, guess what they did? They then went to Public Safety and said, ‘He raped me.’” — Robert Jennings at, of all places, at Lincoln's All Women's Convocation in September

Trouble is, what Jennings seemed to have been saying doesn’t appear to be true. Michael Noone, the first assistant district attorney in Chester County, says he has never heard one single report of rape at Lincoln from the last semester, and the one allegation of attempted sexual assault was dropped because "it could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt."

But that didn’t stop Jennings:

“When you allege that somebody did something of that nature to you, you go to jail. I don’t care how close they are to finishing the degree, their whole life changes overnight. Why am I saying all this, ladies? I’m saying this because, first and foremost, don’t put yourself in a situation that would cause you to be trying to explain something that really needs no explanation had you not put yourself in that situation.”

He’s victim blaming and victim shaming; it’s a woman’s fault if she gets raped because she was in a place where she shouldn’t be, like in public, or dressed in a way she shouldn’t dress because men cannot control their sexual urges when a woman dresses provocatively — as in wearing clothes — and so if they rape her, well, she was kinda asking for it.

All of Jennings’s comments were caught on videotape during the conference, but now, of course, he’s claiming that they were edited and taken out of context:

“No one would ever discourage a young woman on this campus from reporting a sexual assault. In fact, I emphasize to them how serious that allegation is and that the university takes it very seriously and so does the federal government and so does the court.”

And yet at the very meeting where he made his outrageous statements, there was a presentation for female students to show them how to dress; they were told not to show panty lines or wear dark bras under white shirts because that means they want to be raped.

And if they dress like that, and if they are raped, then it is their fault, and they shouldn’t press charges because they might ruin the life of a college male who’s close to graduating.

For its part, Lincoln University said that the point of the convocation was to help female students make "informed decisions about dating, in an effort to protect them from some males who may mislead them," and noted President Jennings "holds the same kind of conversation with male students in their convocation."

Bully for him that he talks to male students about the subject, but you know he also tells those students that just because a woman looks like she wants to be raped, and goes to a place where she’s likely to be raped, doesn’t mean they should rape her.

Now, to be fair, I’m sure there are cases of women who cry rape when it wasn’t rape, but that is not the norm, and that does not ever mean you blame any woman who says she was raped. You investigate, fully, and then you punish the perpetrator, either the rapist, or the woman who lied about being raped. You do not simply lump every rape allegation into the “She Asked For It” or “She’s Just Pissed Because He Never Called Back” category.

And Jennings should be ashamed of himself for suggesting that, and he should step down immediately. It’s a disgusting tale he’s telling.

Now, of course, Jennings is no longer playing the “out of context” game and has issued an apology … of sorts:

"My message was intended to emphasize personal responsibility and mutual respect. I apologize for my choice of words. I certainly did not intend to hurt or offend anyone."

He didn’t intend to offend anyone.

Note to Robert Jennings: It should have gone like this:

“I’m sorry I offended anyone with my remarks. I’m sorry I hurt anyone. I.Was.Wrong.”

That’s an apology.

via NCRM

ISBL Asshat of the Week: Renee Ellmers

I don’t know why anyone would choose to be a Republican; sure, I get conservative; I get financial conservative. But what I don’t get is the rigid, rightwingnut religious rantings of people who say they want smaller government then try to get Big Government to stick its nose in every nook and cranny, and vagina, in the country.

And I’ll give men a pass because, well, men are idiots. But I don’t understand female Republicans. Why would you join a party, a political party that seems hell bent on telling you what you can do with your own body? Sure, I know there are Pro-Life women out there, but why let a man tell you what you can do, what health care choices you can make, and how you should live your live as though you don’t know how?

Then I read about Renee Ellmers, the ISBL Asshat of the Week and if she’s a typical Republican, well then, I get it now.

Recently, a group of the more conservative GOP women in the House of Representatives attended a Republican National Committee conference that was supposed to train them how to talk to women voters about Republican policies.  You know, cuz women — and by women, it appears they mean the non-GOP women — are dumb.

Since there are only 19 female Republicans in the House, it wasn’t a big meeting and it went mostly unnoticed; except for ….

One of the 19 was Renee Ellmers, a two-term Congresswoman from North Carolina. Ellmers shot to conservative asshat fame last year when she that she won’t be giving up her pay during the government shutdown that her party created because, she said, “I need my paycheck. That’s the bottom line.” 

She also, at the same time, used that tried-and-untrue GOP method of opposing Obamacare with a boatload of lies and innuendo; in fact, she was such an outright liar that even her own constituents stormed her Facebook page to put her on blast for “embarrassing them” and their state. 

But that didn’t stop Ellmers who, at that GOP conference on how to talk to female voters, gave a speech entitled "Taking Back the Future" and here’s a little of what she said:

“Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level. Many of my male colleagues, when they go to the House floor, you know, they’ve got some pie chart or graph behind them and they’re talking about trillions of dollars and how, you know, the debt is awful and, you know, we all agree with that.”

Okay, let me get this queer: she believes men are smarter than everyone else because they have props, and most of us are just too dumb to understand a pie chart. But she goes on — and boy, does she go on — to say that all women really want is more time in their lives … as in, and I quote, “more time in the morning to get ready.”

So, according to this woman, women are too dumb to understand a graph, and need more time in the mirror before heading out to do a job that men do better because they have graphs. But then she puts another nail into the coffin of the GOP when she said this:

“We need our male colleagues to understand that if you can bring it down to a woman’s level and with everything that she is balancing in her life — that’s the way to go.”

Bring.It.Down.

Wow. So, the way to get women to understand GOP policies is to treat them as though they are stupid; use one-syllable words and pictures; maybe pretty music and mirrors and lights; shiny stuff.

Again, I say, I get conservative, but I don’t get why a woman should join the GOP when the men in the party want to tell her how to use, or not use, her own body, and the women in the GOP think she’s too dumb to understand anyway.

At least Renee Ellmers doesn’t understand, and that’s why she’s the ISBL Asshat of the Week.

Let me put it in a way she might understand: you’re dumb, honey.

via The New Civil Rights Movement

Hobby Lobby ... Your Source For Christian Love

The Green family, who own and run the Hobby Lobby stores — we have one here in Columbia, in which I will not set one foot — like to proclaim how ‘Christian’ they are; Steve Green, the president of the company, proudly says, "We're Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles."

Hardly. Look at the crap they sell and I dare you to find many that don’t say ‘Made In china’ on the bottom. I double-dog dare you.

China, a country that has one of the worst human rights records in history; a country where children often toil in sweatshops making the little trinkets you can buy at Hobby Lobby; a country where, in Shanghai at least, the minimum wage is $293 … a month. And that;s the highest paid anywhere in mainland China; it works out to about $10.00 a day … a little more than a dollar an hour.

That’s what your Christian Hobby Lobby is selling you. Doesn’t sound very Christ-like does it? Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you support underage labor?

And since this issue is ALLEGEDLY all about Hobby Lobby’s Christian owner’s refusal to pay for contraceptives under their healthcare plan, let’s look at how China handles that situation, since Hobby Lobby is really an extension of the Chinese marketplace right here in our own back yard.

Think about China's one-child policy, which means that many Chinese couples hope for sons to carry on the family name; female children are considered valueless and because of that there is an enormous underground abortion business going on. Hobby Lobby, in purchasing goods made by children for a dollar an hour funds that abortion business. So, so Christ-like.

There are roughly 35,000 abortions in China every single day; 336 million over the last four decades. In purchasing Chinese made products, Hobby Lobby pays for that,. though they don't want you to know it.

Okay, sure, lotsa companies buy their goods from China and sell them on their shelves to us, but how many proclaim to be ‘Christian’ businesses run on Christian principles? How can they be so riled up about providing employees with health insurance covering contraceptives when they don’t give a good God damn about the policies in China that result in horrific child labor and forced abortions? 

If contributing to a healthcare system that provides state funded abortions or birth control was truly against their deeply held Christian beliefs, Hobby Lobby could easily have chosen to buy and sell goods made in the US. And they could have opted to do business in any part of the world where these services aren’t funded by tax dollars. They did not.

How is that Christian love?

And speaking of Christianity and faith, think about the 1.35 billion Chinese people who are denied the freedom to worship; Hobby Lobby doesn’t care about that because they have knick-knacks to sell.

So, if you shop at Hobby Lobby, think about that the next time; think about the children who made that plate; think about the women forced to undergo abortions because their unborn child won’t be male; think about the people in China who cannot freely worship. And if you still want that little trinket, then stop calling yourself a Christian, because you aren’t. If you still want to spend your money at Hobby Lobby, go right ahead, but in addition to knowing what you are buying, and where it came from, and how it was made, know where your hard-earned dollars go.

For their employees’ 401K plans, Hobby Lobby invests in the very industries the Greens say they oppose; they invest, and make money off of, the makers of Plan B, Tevo Pharmaceutical Industry. They also invest in Actavus, which makes a generic version of Plan B, and also distributes Ella, a second form of birth control that Hobby Lobby claims to be religiously opposed to.

Unless they’re making an investment in it.

Hobby Lobby also has investments in Pfizer, AstroZeneca and Forest Laboratories; companies that make drugs commonly used in abortions, including Cytotec, Prostin E2 and Cervidil. Hobby Lobby’s 401K investment program, which offers an employer matching contribution, also invests in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover abortion, abortion drugs as well as Plan B and Ella.

But they have no problem with that because they're making money off of those investments.

And finally, know that, just before declaring their Christian faith as a reason to opt out of paying for contraception under their healthcare plan, Hobby Lobby’s own private insurance plan actually provided coverage for both Plan B and Ella; it wasn’t until Obamacare came along that they suddenly had an issue with it.

That ain't Christian, it's Teabagging.

So, when you listen to folks praise Hobby Lobby for standing up for their Christian faith, be aware that they are not being truthful. They buy goods from countries that fund abortions, state-sanctioned and illegal abortions; they buy goods from countries that have one of the worst records for child labor laws. And, they take your money, the money you spend on bric-a-brac and crap, and invest it in the very companies that provide the kinds of drugs and services they say their Christian faith is against.

That is not Christian love; it’s hypocrisy; it’s corporate greed; it’s a lie.

source

#JoinTheDissent

via The Advocate