It never ceases to amaze me what levels of cruelty are tolerated because of the three magic words: “It’s our religion.”
Female circumcision in Africa. Women in beekeeper costumes in the Middle East. Needless slaughter of animals. Torture of the infidels to elicit confessions and repentance. Wars and rape and pillaging in the name of God. Denial of emergency medical treatment to children (my personal peeve; my wife was raised Christian Scientist and lived with facial deformities and terrible sinus pain and migraines thanks to facial fractures suffered in an accident at age 11 – I guess God wanted her to grow up in pain and relentlessly teased to the point of developing life-threatening bulimia. He works in mysterious ways like that.)
I believe if Abraham/Jesus/Mohommed came to earth today, he’d look at 90% of his followers and exclaim, “what fucking part of ‘do unto others’ did you not understand?!” Well, maybe except for the “fucking” part…
Courtesy of Pam’s House Blend, I’ve learned of the plight of 16-year-old Zach. He’s a gay teenager, struggling to come to terms with his identity. He comes out to his Christian parents. They freak out, decide they’ve failed as parents, and ship the kid off to one of those “gay re-education boot camps” to brainwash him and destroy any shred of esteem he has left. He plummets to the depths of depression. He fights back suicidal and matricidal fantasies. He runs away. Yup, his parents are failures all right… but not for raising a gay kid, rather for psychologically torturing their child when he needed them the most.
Zach has a blog. Visit him and offer him some support.
