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Tag: Gay Pride Flag

Evangelical Conspiracy Theories and Hysterical Thinking

lego store

It can be argued that Christianity itself is a conspiracy, complete with a mythical virgin-born, sinless God-man. This God-man turned water into wine, walked on water, healed blindness with dirt and spit, raised people from the dead, teleported from one room to another, and healed sick people. Then, at thirty-three, this God-man was executed, descended into the earth’s bowels to preach to people, resurrected from the dead, and walked around Jerusalem for 40 days before ascending into the clouds, never to be seen again. According to Christians, this resurrected, glorified God-man is sitting on a throne in Heaven, hearing and answering prayers, and magically performing millions and millions and millions and millions of miracles.

Evangelicals take the conspiracy theory even further, believing that the Bible is supernaturally inspired by God, and is inerrant and infallible. Meant to be read literally, the Bible provides Evangelicals with all sorts of conspiracy theories. Having grown up in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement in the 1960s and 1970s, I heard lots of preaching on the end times, the rapture, the great tribulation, the antichrist, the second coming of Jesus, and the making of a new Heaven and a new Earth. With newspapers in one hand and their KJV Bibles in the other, preachers connected allegedly prophetic Bible verses with newspaper headlines. Sermons about Satan walking to and fro upon the earth, seeking to oppress, possess, and destroy people, were illustrated with nefarious conspiracy theories (i.e. grocery scanners were really meant to scan people’s hands for the mark of the beast, football stadiums were built to be used to persecute Christians and feed them to the lions, the Illuminati, trilateral commission, or the Rothschilds rule the world, to name a few.)

Today, thanks to the Internet and ready access to the news, Evangelical conspiracy theories abound. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t read about a new conspiracy theory that is a sure sign that Jesus’ return to earth is imminent — a message I have been hearing my entire life. For the remainder of this post, I want to focus on two uber-conspiracy theorists: Geri Ungurean, who blogs at Absolute Truth From the Word of God: Jesus Has Every Answer and Jeff Maples who blogs at The Dissenter (formerly Reformation Charlotte).

Several days ago, a mega-dairy of 18,000 cows exploded outside of Dimmitt, Texas, killing most of the cows and landing one worker in intensive care.

The Texas Tribune reports:

More than 18,000 cows died and one farm worker is in critical condition following a dairy farm fire in the Texas Panhandle.

The fire started Monday night at South Fork Dairy Farm in Dimmitt, about 66 miles south of Amarillo. The Castro County sheriff’s office, along with fire departments from Dimmitt, Hart and Nazareth, were the first responders to the explosion in the small town of nearly 4,200, according to the sheriff’s office.

One person was trapped inside the dairy farm but was rescued by first responders, according to the sheriff’s office. They were later flown to a Lubbock hospital.

According to the Animal Welfare Institute, the incident is the deadliest fire involving cows in nearly a decade. A statement provided by the Texas Association of Dairymen on behalf of the dairy industry expressed condolences for the incident.

“We are deeply saddened for the family dairy, and everyone affected by the tragedy that occurred at South Fork Dairy farm,” the statement said. “The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and we are deferring to the appropriate authorities to make that determination.”

In 2019, Texas authorized the facility to more than double the number of cattle allowed on-site from 11,500 to up to 32,000, according to a permit with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The state also authorized the facility to increase its manure production by more than 50% in that expanded permit.

While there are several possible explanations for the explosion, i.e. a methane gas explosion and fire, Geri Ungurean was having none of that:

Sounds to me as if they rounded up those 18k cows for the slaughter. I also think that this has Bill Gates’ fingerprints all over it.

….

Do you get the feeling that America’s food supply is being targeted? This is deliberate and nefarious.

COME LORD JESUS!

Ungurean’s fellow conspiracy theorists chimed in:

Comment One: Yes I certainly do!! It is not by accident that food and processing plants are burning down all over America. Come Lord Jesus Come

Comment Two: I don’t think the dairy biz is too lucrative these days but in all my years I never heard of one exploding like this one. Maybe the owners took an early Billie G retirement type 401k boost to look the other way + big ins payout. Ya never know what those good old Texas boys will do. They yes maam or sir u to death but in the end do whatever they want…that’s been my experience.

Does seem odd nationwide toxic trains derailing near rivers, food processors burning down, drinking water contaminations & the chem trails above (oops I mean contrails, wink, wink) keep up their toxic sky trails. Something like 18 food processing plants been damaged or eradicated by fire in the last year.

Also the Chinese buying up oodles of “farm” land near nuke style military bases & Chinese intelligence balloons sauntering overhead unimpeded. Thank goodness citizens in their driveways noticed the intrusion & notified our great defenders to check it out which they did after it crossed the whole country at its leisure.

Chinese now owning Smithfield (biggest pork producer in USA,) Billie G (not known for being the outdoorsy type) also made himself biggest land owner in USA & owns about 1/3 of all farmland in the USA according to Dept of agriculture. Just coincidence, folks, move along, nothing to worry about, the govt is here to help you. Put ur heads back into ur Facebook & Twitter, no worries ignore the big picture.

Comment Three: Nothin’ to see here, huh? Move along now…….

Comment Four: Notice how all these explosions have that wicked black smoke. Can’t wait til all these evil entities meet the Lord.

There is no hope of reaching people who think like this. Occam’s razor and a little bit of knowledge about how mega-dairies operate suggest that this was likely a methane gas explosion. Rural folks such as myself, who have spent their lives living in farm country, know that concentrated cow shit is not only toxic, it is also combustible, given the right circumstances. Certainly, there could be a different cause — say a Muslim terrorist attack 🙂 — but my money is on exploding cow shit.

On to Jeff Maples . . .

Today, Maples wrote a post titled Father Confronts LEGO Clerks for Pushing LGBTQ Propaganda on Little Children. Here’s what he had to say:

One has to ask the question: why is the LGBTQ industry so hell-bent on targeting children? Why is LEGO holding a queer festival in its stores to promote sexual deviancy to children who would otherwise not even think about such things?

To be clear, the LGBTQ movement and its various symbols, including the pride flag, have absolutely nothing to do with love. Friends, even friends of the same sex, can love each other—but it is not sexual. The LGBTQ movement is a movement designed for the sole purpose normalizing aberrant, dangerous, and violent sex acts among people of the same sex.

So why in the world would these people be so concerned about promoting such filth to children?

As the father, who is also a member of TPUSA, confronts the store clerks, he asks these very questions, to which they only replied with a call to security to have him removed from the store.

“The question,” the father asked, “is why are you all in here with those pins on? Do you think children care about what man sucks penis at home and what girl eats vaginas at home?”

“Do you think they care about that?” Amanchukwu pressed.

“I don’t think they think about that, personally,” the clerk said. 

“Right,” the father said, “so they think about it when they see your pin.” At this point, security arrives to remove the father from the store “When does it stop?” he asked. “At some point, we need to stop pushing this mess on children.”

Maples, along with his buddies at Protestia, are well-known for their obsession with human genitalia. They think it is their duty to police what people do with their genitals — especially LGBTQ people — but have little to no concern about what Evangelical preachers do with theirs. (Please see the Black Collar Crime Series.)

Maples post features a video of a preacher named John Amanchukwu going into a LEGO store to make a scene. I found the video on YouTube:

The video must be viewed on YouTube.

Evidently, there was a rainbow LEGO display in the store. Further, store employees were wearing rainbow pins. Any fair-minded viewer of this video will conclude that Amanchukwu wanted to make a scene; that he is a bigot and a bully. This was no happenstance encounter, as the fact that there is a video clearly shows.

According to Amanchukwu, the fact of store employees wearing rainbow pins and the store having a rainbow LEGO display is evidence of the LEGO Company trying to groom children, making them targets of LGBTQ people, especially those evil, despicable transgender folks.

Amanchukwu explains what he did and why this way:

My six year old son goes into @LEGO_Group to find a LEGO set for me to purchase. While being in the store, we notice that 4 store clerks are marketing PRIDE FLAGS on their aprons, in a store that caters to KIDS! That’s disgusting 🤢. This is another form of indoctrination. What does your sexual preference have to do with cheap plastic toys made for kids? Why? When does it stop? Are there any safe places for children left? DEI is ruining America. The LEFT glorifies INCLUSION, but I was asked to leave the mall because I opposed the madness of GROOMERS. That’s not inclusion, that’s exclusion. The Biden administration has the backs of the LGBTQIA+ community, but who has the backs of INNOCENT IMPRESSIONABLE CHILDREN??? I DO!!! Going WOKE tanked Toys R Us and it has cost Bud Light nearly 4 Billion dollars. Is LEGO next? Luke 17:2 It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin.

Amanchukwu would have us believe that he did this for his son; that he did this for THE CHILDREN. Really? All he taught his son was how to bully people. Worse, in the presence of other children, he said, “Do you think children care about what man sucks penis at home and what girl eats vaginas at home?”

Amanchukwu also doesn’t seem to know that LEGOS are for all ages, not just six-year-olds. My fifteen-year-old grandson plays with LEGOS — I mean EXPENSIVE LEGOS — and he definitely cares about that penis and vagina stuff (yes, I can see his red face from here). 🙂 I know adults who collect LEGOS and build all sorts of complex things with them.

No, the real issue here is that Maples and Amanchukwu have bought into yet another Evangelical conspiracy theory. The gays/homos/faggots/lesbos/queers/trannies — their words, not mine — are coming for American children, grooming them, and robbing them of their innocence. Never mind the fact that most sexual crimes against children are perpetrated by heterosexual men; children are at greater risk of assault by a stepfather than they are by the gay man who lives down the street; children are at greater risk of being sexually assaulted by their heterosexual pastor or youth director than by a gay man or lesbian woman.

As with Ungurean, there’s no hope of talking sense into Maples and Amanchukwu. Their worldviews are driven by hysteria and newspaper headlines. As long as they demonize others, and see themselves as defenders of Biblical morality, nothing can be done to change their minds. All I know to do is expose their wickedness — to use a good Bible word — for all the world to see. People need to know that the Ungureans, Maples, and Amanchukwus of the world walk among us; that their hysterical religious, political, and social beliefs can and do cause harm.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Mark Anthony Escalera Follows Dorothy Over the Rainbow Over Gay Pride Flag

gay pride flag
Fundamentalist Christian Mark Anthony Escalera Slays a Gay Pride Flag

Snark, sarcasm ahead!

Over at the fundamentalist Christian Defending Contending blog, Mark Anthony Escalera had this to say: (link no longer active)

…After the flood, God created a rainbow to be His seal in the heavens. It was a declaration to show the mercy and longsuffering of God. The rainbow was His picture to a depraved world that while He would never again destroy the world with a flood, He would be coming again. The next time He comes, there will be no rainbows. There will only be fire and total destruction of ALL that stand opposed to Him.

The true rainbow is made up of 7 different primary colors of a spectrum. It is a beautiful reminder of the wonder that God long holds up His wrath and judgment against the wickedness of this world. Seven in the Bible indicates perfection and completion.

However, Satan perverted that sign and it is now used around the world as a symbol of “gay pride.” It has only 6 colors. Six in the Bible is the number of man. This “rainbow” is not a true rainbow, but is a symbol of perversion, debauchery, sodomy, lust, pedophilia, and bestiality – just to name a few. The one below is a perversion, and for the record, the White House KNEW what was coming and this was done deliberately. Read Psalm 2 for the conclusion….

According to the ignorant Escalera, a TRUE rainbow has SEVEN colors, seven being a number that many fundamentalists think signifies perfection and completion. The gay pride flag only has SIX colors, six being a number that many fundamentalists think is the number of man; you know like 666. In Escalera’s addled mind, the difference between seven and six colors is proof that the gay pride flag is a “symbol of perversion, debauchery, sodomy, lust, pedophilia, and bestiality – just to name a few. ” For a minute, when he started listing all the sins gays practice, I thought he was talking about Evangelical pastors. Just saying…

Evidently Escalera doesn’t have access to Wikipedia:

A spectrum obtained using a glass prism and a point source is a continuum of wavelengths without bands. The number of colours that the human eye is able to distinguish in a spectrum is in the order of 100. Accordingly, the Munsell colour system (a 20th-century system for numerically describing colours, based on equal steps for human visual perception) distinguishes 100 hues. The apparent discreteness of main colours is an artefact of human perception and the exact number of main colours is a somewhat arbitrary choice.

Newton, who admitted his eyes were not very critical in distinguishing colours,[8] originally (1672) divided the spectrum into five main colours: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Later he included orange and indigo, giving seven main colours by analogy to the number of notes in a musical scale. Newton chose to divide the visible spectrum into seven colours out of a belief derived from the beliefs of the ancient Greek sophists, who thought there was a connection between the colours, the musical notes, the known objects in the Solar System, and the days of the week.

According to Isaac Asimov, “It is customary to list indigo as a color lying between blue and violet, but it has never seemed to me that indigo is worth the dignity of being considered a separate color. To my eyes it seems merely deep blue.”

The colour pattern of a rainbow is different from a spectrum, and the colours are less saturated. There is spectral smearing in a rainbow owing to the fact that for any particular wavelength, there is a distribution of exit angles, rather than a single unvarying angle. In addition, a rainbow is a blurred version of the bow obtained from a point source, because the disk diameter of the sun (0.5°) cannot be neglected compared to the width of a rainbow (2°). The number of colour bands of a rainbow may therefore be different from the number of bands in a spectrum, especially if the droplets are particularly large or small. Therefore, the number of colours of a rainbow is variable. If, however, the word rainbow is used inaccurately to mean spectrum, it is the number of main colours in the spectrum.

The question of whether everyone sees seven colours in a rainbow is related to the idea of Linguistic relativity. Suggestions have been made that there is universality in the way that a rainbow is perceived. However, more recent research suggests that the number of distinct colours observed and what these are called depend on the language that one uses with people whose language has fewer colour words seeing fewer discrete colour bands.

And just like that, Escalera’s  Bullingerian (see notes) numerical nonsense goes up in smoke.

Think this is Escalera’s worst with Dorothy over the rainbow moment? Oh no. Here’s how he ends his post:

…If you are reading this and think that this is the final conclusion of the LGBT community, then you have been duped. The LGBT community will NOT stop until the next step of Satan’s agenda has been accomplished and accepted. Polygamy will soon be accepted. The age of consent will be dropped just as is happening in other parts of the world. Adherents of LGBT, PFLAG, and NAMBLA cannot have their own children and will only grow as they prey on more and more young people trying to entice them to a life of lust-filled debauchery that will never offer anything but disease and heartache for it is not what God ordained.

Soon, this blog may be taken down because it will be considered hate speech. I know that day is coming. Many companies openly rejoice in the ruling by SCOTUS. One day soon, true believers will be given a choice to conform to the world’s standards or lose their jobs…

Someone unschooled in hyperbolic, delusional Evangelical rhetoric might conclude that Escalera is exaggerating (literary lying) to make a point. But, he’s not. He really believes that ONE DAY SOON, (as in ONE DAY SOON Jesus is coming back’?) his blog will be considered hate speech and taken down by the U.S. government. ONE DAY SOON, (as in ONE DAY SOON Evangelicals are going to start caring about the poor and disenfranchised’?) Christians such as he are going to lose their jobs over their homophobic, bigoted stand for Jesus.

Here’s the truth. Yes, Escalera’s post is offensive, ignorant, hateful, bigoted, and homophobic. But, all of these behaviors are completely legal. Escalera seems to forget he lives in the United States. Hate speech is protected speech, so Escalera is free to hate away. The same goes for losing his job. No employer is going to fire employees over what they believe as long as they don’t promote their beliefs while at work. In some instances, employers have a personal conduct code and this might result in someone being fired over hate speech, but most of the time employees, on their own time, are free to swill Schlitz, wave around an AK47, listen to Toby Keith, drape themselves in the confederate flag, and remind anyone who will listen that God hates fags!

Note

E.W. Bullinger was a nineteenth century Fundamentalist dispensationalist who believed the numbers in the Bible have spiritual meanings.(You can read Bullinger’s book, Number in Scripture: Its Supernatural Design and Spiritual Significance, here.

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Bruce Gerencser