President Trump I don’t think has admitted to having an affair with this person [porn actress Stormy Daniels]. And so this is just a news story, and I don’t even know if it’s accurate [Why does Graham believe pathological liar Donald Trump over Stormy Daniel?].
I believe at 70 years of age the president is a much different person today than he was four years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago [there’s no evidence for this being true]. He is not President Perfect [no shit Sherlock].
We certainly don’t hold him up as the pastor of this nation and he is not. But I appreciate the fact that the president does have a concern for Christian values, he does have a concern to protect Christians whether it’s here at home or around the world and I appreciate the fact that he protects religious liberty and freedom [gag me with a spoon].
Our country’s got a sin problem, and I believe if these politicians [Democrats and liberals] in Washington would recognize the moral failure of so many of their policies [hot button social issues] that maybe we could fix it [I thought only Jesus could fix our “sin” problem?].
I have spent most of my sixty years of life living in rural Ohio. I was born in Bryan, Ohio — a small community in Northwest Ohio. My dad’s parents immigrated to the United States from Hungary in the 1920s and settled down on a hundred acre farm a few miles south of Bryan. Dad and his siblings attended schools in the very district my wife and I now call home. We live in a small spot along State Highway 15. Ney, population 345, has two bars/restaurants and a convenience store/fast station. Dad graduated from Ney High School in 1954. I attended elementary school for several years west of here in the flashing-light, spot-in-the-road town called Farmer. Dad frequently moved us from town to town, unable, for some inexplicable reason, to pay the rent. It wasn’t until junior high that I got a taste of “big” city life. For three and a half years, we lived in Findlay, the home of Marathon Oil. This allowed me to attend the same school for three straight years. I actually had the same friends from one school year to the next!
Divorce and Dad moving us to Arizona turned my happy world upside down. At age sixteen, I returned to Findlay for my eleventh-grade year. I then returned to Bryan to live with my mother. Lots of drama, including Mom being locked up in Toledo State Hospital, resulted in my siblings and me being uprooted and moved once again to Arizona. By then, I had dropped out of high school. In the fall of 1975, I moved back to Bryan and took a job working at a local grocery store. A year later, I left Bryan to attend classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. I returned to Bryan three years later, pregnant wife in tow.
Polly and I spent much of our married life living in small, rural communities. The churches I pastored were, for the most part, attended by white, working-class people. In 1995, we moved back to the flatland of rural Northwest Ohio. I pastored two nearby churches, moving away from the area to pastor a church in rural Michigan, along with a move to Yuma, Arizona. In the end, like the proverbial bad penny, I seem to always make my way back to Northwest Ohio. In 2007, we bought our house in Ney. Our six children and eleven grandchildren (soon to be twelve) all live within twenty minutes of our home.
There are times when Polly and I yearn for the big city; for the anonymity that living in such places provide. But, we love our family, and when we bought our home, we committed ourselves to living here until death do us part. This is the place and people we call home. We love the slowness of life, and when we need a big city fix, Fort Wayne and Toledo are but an hour away.
I write all this to say that my roots run deep into the soil of rural Ohio. No matter how often I fled the scene, looking for excitement and diversity, I always seemed to come right back to where life started for me. Polly was a city girl, but forty years of country living have turned her into a small-town girl who has embraced the rural way of life. Would we live where we do if it weren’t for our children and grandchildren? Probably not. And the reason for this is simple. While both of us feel quite at home in rural Ohio, our beliefs have changed greatly over the past two decades. This change of thinking puts us at odds with most of our neighbors — politically, religiously, and socially.
Rural northwest Ohio is the land of God, Guns, and the Republican Party. Hundreds of conservative churches dot the landscape, and virtually every public office is held by a Republican. In Defiance County where I live, the Democratic Party has fielded two winners in the last decade, neither of whom is currently in office. Living here means that I must accept the monoculture of my surroundings, a society where it is assumed that everyone thinks and believes the same way. Someone like me, a socialist/pacifist/atheist, is a rare bird. While I have met more than a few people with similar views (particularly young adults), there are no liberal/humanist/atheist/secular groups or meet-ups in rural Northwest Ohio. People who don’t fit the rural Ohio political and religious mold exist, but few are vocal about their liberalness and unbelief. Why? Doing so would be socially suicidal.
One of my sons and I were talking about this tonight — about how being an out-of-the closet unbeliever or liberal leads to social suicide. While I am often lauded for my outspokenness about local politics and religion, my position has come at a high cost socially. I have in the past pondered whether, if I had it to do all over again, I would have been so vocal early on about my atheistic beliefs. I know that my outspokenness (and my age and disability) has made me unemployable. I own a photography business. When locals are given a choice between an Evangelical photographer and me, guess what? They usually choose the God-fearing one (regardless of the quality of work).
Over the past fifteen months, I have made a concerted effort to, outside of this blog, to tone down my public pronouncements. At times, I feel guilty for doing so; feeling as if I am a sell-out or a hypocrite. Everyone should be able to be who and what they are, right? Sure, but small-town life demands at least some modicum of outward conformity to tribal political, religious, and social beliefs. Disobey and you will pay the price. And for my family in particular, I don’t want them being socially and economically punished for who their father is. Some of my children may agree with me, but their futures depend on them not committing social suicide. Rarely does a week or two go by without one of my children telling me that someone at work — a boss, fellow employee, or customer — was inquiring about whether they were related to me. My children have become experts at fielding such interrogations, knowing that they are always free to say, Hmm, Bruce Gerencser? Don’t know the guy.
Ney Village Limit Sign, Slightly Altered.
I plan to live the remaining days and years of my life in Ney, Ohio. As a committed liberal and atheist — who also wants to get along and be accepted by his neighbors — I have to find ways to be true to self while at the same time not being ostracized by locals. Everything, unfortunately, comes down to money. My wife and I need to earn money to live. Earning money requires acceptance by local employers/customers. While it would be wonderful to be a street-corner atheist (and some locals think I am way too outspoken, even at presently muted levels), I have to live here, and being one would be social suicide. The violations of separation of church and state are so common is this area that the Freedom From Religion Foundation could spend the next year or so filing lawsuits against local government agencies, schools, and businesses. Yes, I find these violations of the law egregious, and the street-corner atheist in me wants to call out and condemn their sins. But, I can’t, for in doing so I would cause great social harm not only to myself but to my wife, children, and grandchildren. If I made $40,000 a year blogging, things would be different, but as things now stand, I must swim in waters infested with Evangelical/right-wing Republican sharks, and being a lone fish is sure to turn me into a snack.
I have much hope in the belief that things are slowly changing here in rural Northwest Ohio. Local millennials are not as religious as their parents, and they most certainly don’t hold to the moral and religious values of their grandparents. It is in these young adults that I see promise. It is unlikely that this area will ever be as liberal as the West or East coasts, but I am hoping that there is coming a day when it won’t be social suicide to say that I am a liberal, a socialist, and non-Christian.
For now, I must choose my battles carefully, hoping that I can safely navigate the dangerous waters of rural Ohio. I have seen progress on this front thanks to my high school basketball photography. I have talked to more locals in the past few months than in the last ten years combined. I want them to see me as a family man, as a decent, kind curmudgeon who also happens to take really good pictures. I know that Google is not my friend, but there nothing I can do about the stories she might tell if someone asks her about Bruce Gerencser. Just last week, one my children ran into several people their age who were once members of a local church I pastored. These young adults have heard the gossip about me and read up on me, thanks to the Internet, but they still can’t understand how it is possible that the man they once called pastor is now a heathen. What happened? they asked, desperately trying to figure out how I ended up where I am today. Lost on such people is the fact that I am, in many ways, the same man I was when I was their pastor. Sure, I am a political liberal and an atheist. But, personality-wise I am pretty much the same guy. I am still a down-home friendly man with a wry sense of humor. I am…Bruce. [My editor commented, Your closing raises some interesting questions. Are you the same guy? I think it is hard for you to claim that you are. Sure, you are still a decent, hard-working man, but you have done an about-face in regard to many of your core beliefs of your prior life.]
I would love to hear from readers who find it difficult to navigate the waters of their communities. Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Brandon Hixon, a former Idaho Republican state lawmaker, committed suicide this week. According to his ex-wife, Danielle Eirvin Hixon, Brandon was under investigation for sexually molesting two girls. Hixon was a Christian. According to Ballotpedia, Hixon described his religious views this way:
I have always been a voice in the fight against abortion. I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman and I do not support gay marriage. I support the freedom of religion, and recognize that we have many different faiths and beliefs around the state and district, however, this country was founded on Christian principles and that should never be forgotten.
The former wife of an Idaho Republican state lawmaker who shot and killed himself this week says he was under investigation for molesting two girls, including a young female relative who was abused for more than 10 years. Brandon Hixon died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at his home, the Canyon County Coroner’s office told CBS affiliate KBOI.
Former colleagues at the Idaho Statehouse have offered kind words about Hixon, but his ex-wife Danielle Eirvin Hixon said the suicide robbed her family’s hopes of finding justice and closure though the legal system.
She told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that she told police about the abuse and that her husband raped and inappropriately touched one of the alleged female victims for about 11 years.
“Brandon made people believe that he was a stand-up, morally correct person,” said Hixon, who was married to the former lawmaker for 10 years until their divorce in 2016. “But behind the house walls, he would cheat on me and molested children.”
Scott Graf, spokesman for Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, said Wasden’s office had no comment on the investigation.
Hixon – a three-term Republican from Caldwell – had resigned from the state legislature in October after news emerged that he was the subject of a criminal investigation involving possible sexual abuse, though no details were made public.
His ex-wife said she had been told by investigators not to disclose details about the case until charges were filed against her ex-husband, but that the reason to keep the information confidential ended with his suicide. She said she and two other people had been scheduled to testify before a grand jury on Wednesday.
….
“I had no idea it was happening,” Danielle Eirvin Hixon said of the alleged abuse, adding that the girl who told her “kept it quiet for so long.”
The second alleged victim was not related to the lawmaker, she said, adding that she learned about that girl from the girl’s mother.
….
Records also show that the former lawmaker was previously the focus of a separate police investigation in 2014 after he was accused of inappropriate touching. He denied the accusations and told police he was worried they would harm his political career. It’s unknown if the new investigation, ongoing since Oct. 5, was connected to the earlier case.
Danielle Eirvin Hixon said comments by lawmakers praising her ex-husband’s character prompted her to speak up about the abuse allegations. She said she wanted people to know her side of the story.
“I say he was a coward by taking the easy way out,” she said of his suicide.
Scott DesJarlais, Republican Representative from Tennessee, was given a second term in office even after voters learned the divorced physician had sex with his patients while still married to his wife and encouraged them to have abortions. Here’s what comedian and political commentator Bill Maher had to say about Des Jarlais:
DesJarlais, who happens to be one-hundred-percent anti-abortion and is endorsed by the National Right to Life, says that God has forgiven him for his past misdeeds — I made a very poor decision in my first marriage. I know God’s forgiven me. DesJarlais is quoted as saying, All life should be cherished and protected. Evidently, this doesn’t include the fetuses of the mistresses he impregnated.
Republican Congressman Scott DesJarlais has largely managed to avoid scrutiny of his sexual conduct, although they conflict with his family-values platform. DesJarlais, 53, said he supported his first wife Susan Lohr’s decision to have two abortions while they were together. Before becoming a politician and while he was a doctor in Tennessee, still married to Susan, the Christian man admitted to sleeping with two patients. He said he prescribed the now-banned painkiller Darvocet to one of the women. The father took her to Las Vegas and bought her an $875 watch. When the second patient he was sleeping with, who was 24 at the time, thought she was pregnant, DesJarlais offered to take her to Atlanta to have an abortion. The politician said he slept with six women, including three co-workers and a drug company representative, during his three-year marriage to Susan. But now, the remarried DesJarlais proclaims that he is ‘pro-life and proud of it’, and that ‘God has forgiven me.’
We can safely say that many of the Christian Congressional Republicans are Grade A hypocrites who use their faith as little more than window dressing for their election campaigns. Of course, it is Evangelical church members and conservative Catholics who continue to elect them to office, all the while demanding that non-Christians obey the morality code found in the Bible: no sex before marriage, only sex with a spouse after marriage, LGBTQ people are an abomination to God, and same-sex marriage is an abominable violation of God’s divine order for the family. Never mind the fact that more than a few of these sanctimonious politicians ignore the Bible, committing the very “sins” they deplore in others. If Evangelical support of disgraced politician Roy Moore and serial adulterer Donald Trump told us anything, it told us that Evangelicals no longer believe what the Bible teaches about sex. They are far more concerned with political power and maintaining their sticky-handed hold on American society.
DesJarlais is up for election in 2018. He beat his Democratic opponent in 2016 by thirty points. It will be interesting to see if DesJarlais’ whoremongering past keeps him from getting elected. So far, it has been smooth sailing for Representative DesJarlais. Perhaps his past indiscretions will come forward and tell their stories. If so, we will see if Christian Tennesseans put Jesus and the Bible first, and not continued political power. My money is on DesJarlais getting reelected.
Strangely, DesJarlais and his wife are members of Epiphany Episcopal Church in Sherwood, Tennessee. Episcopal churches are known for their liberal beliefs and progressive social values. Either Epiphany Episcopal is an anomaly or the DesJarlais are ducks out of water. Or, perhaps the Episcopalians, too, are enthralled with political power, of having a congressman and his family as members.
I would love to hear a rational, dare I say Biblical, explanation for the continued support of men such as Moore, Trump, and DesJarlais. Back in my preaching days I was a hardcore right-wing Christian. But, I would never have supported a man such as DesJarlais. I would have either not voted or I would have wrote in the name of someone I could support. What seems clear to everyone with eyes to see, is that Evangelicals have traded God’s heavenly kingdom for an earthly one. In doing so, they have lost their voice of authority. Evangelicals gave us Donald Trump, and historians decades from now will write about this era being time when Evangelicalism sold their soul to the company store.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 60, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 39 years. He and his wife have six grown children and eleven 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.
Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.
According to Ben Godwin, Baby Boomers — the free love generation — are to blame for rampant sexual immorality and sexual harassment. Evidently, by having sex before marriage in the 1960s and 1970s, we set into motion a societal revolution that has led to widespread fucking without the benefit of marriage. Worse yet, according to Godwin, Baby Boomers are to blame for — perish the thought — LGBTQ people having sex too.
Sadly, the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s is still producing rotten fruit. Generations with no moral compass or restraint have sown to the wind and now we are reaping the whirlwind (Hos. 8:7). Many who have sown their wild oats are praying for crop failure, but an inescapable law is set in motion—”Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:7-8). Hollywood is partly to blame for this tsunami of immorality. The entertainment industry vomits a steady stream of sexually graphic TV shows and movies that portray women as sex objects. Pornography flows like an open sewer on the internet, and we wonder why sexual assaults and date rape are rampant on college campuses and in society. What do we expect? We, as a nation, have rejected God’s Word, which provides proper boundaries for sexual conduct. We now live in an “anything goes” society.
The Bible is crystal-clear about sexual behavior—”Marriage is honorable among everyone, and the bed undefiled. But God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers” (Heb. 13:4). “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thess. 4:3). It is inappropriate to touch anyone in a sexual way except your legal spouse. Though our sick society says otherwise, adultery, fornication, incest, homosexuality, rape, prostitution, pornography and pedophilia are all still forbidden (Lev. 18:6-26, 19:29; Deut. 22:25; Matt. 5:27-28; Eph. 5:3). Sex, like a fireplace, is a wonderful benefit to enjoy in its proper setting, but if the flames get outside the hearth, they will burn your house down.
There’s an intriguing account of sexual harassment in Genesis, but it’s opposite of the usual way. Instead of a man pushing for sex, it was a woman. Potiphar’s sensual wife held all the cards in this scenario. (While men have taken most of the hits in the media lately, reports abound of male and female leaders alike who abuse their positions and seduce their subordinates.) After Potiphar promoted Joseph from a slave to the steward of his household, his wife “began to look at him lustfully. ‘Come and sleep with me,’ she demanded” (Gen. 39:7, NLT). Genesis 39:10 indicates that this was not a one-time occasion, but she tried to entice Joseph daily. When he repeatedly rebuffed her advances, she falsely accused him of rape and had him arrested. Later, God exonerated and exalted him from the prison to the palace due to his integrity. Joseph never compromised even in the face of torrid temptation; a lesson for us all.
Sexual harassment of women has been front page news in recent months, and Godwin blames Baby Boomers for that too. If we had just stuck to smoking marijuana, racing muscle cars, and listening to the White Album, why who knows how much better the good, old U.S. of A. would be. But no, Baby Boomers wouldn’t keep their bell-bottom jeans zipped up, nor could they keep from tossing their mini-skirts aside for late night sexual romps in the back seat of cars.
Here’s why the good pastor is full of shit. While it is certainly true that Baby Boomers did their fair share of screwing around, so did previous generations. As long as teens and young adults have raging hormones, sexual intercourse is going to be a normal part of their lives. Surely Godwin is not stupid enough to believe that before the 60s, unmarrieds — be they straight, bi, or gay — were not having premarital sex and were living according to the anti-human sexual dictates of the Christian Bible. The only difference between the 1940s and the 1970s is that birth control was widely available in the 1970s and the free love generation was more willing to talk about their sexual escapades. And even among youth imprisoned in Fundamentalist churches, there was plenty of fooling around going on.
Typical of Evangelical preachers, Godwin is looking for someone to blame for the decline of American Christianity and Western Civilization. Who better to blame than the first generation of young adults to openly and defiantly question their parents’ Christian worldview; the first generation to openly challenge pastors and their pronouncements about morality; the first generation to openly wonder whether the Christian God was real. So, from Godwin’s pew, it sure looks like I just proved his point; that Baby Boomers are to blame for what he perceives to be the moral decline of American society. However, what the rock-and-roll generation really did was make it okay to openly question beliefs, values, morality, and ethics. We were no longer willing to sit quietly by while our parents and grandparents told us what to believe. This has led to the increasing secularization of our society and progressive social values, and to perhaps the greatest gift Baby Boomers have given to their children and grandchildren. A new world lies ahead, that is if Baby Boomer Donald Trump doesn’t destroy the world with a nuclear war first.
About Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 60, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 39 years. He and his wife have six grown children and eleven 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.
Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.
Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.
Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.
Twenty-seven psychiatrists and mental health experts have produced a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which I think, despite stating that the fate of the world is in the hands of an evil madman, understates the danger.
The case that these authors make is one that I believe would strike most readers not loyal to Trump as common sense. The evidence that they compile, and with which we’re mostly already familiar, strongly supports their diagnosis of Trump as hedonistic, narcissistic, bullying, dehumanizing, lying, misogynistic, paranoid, racist, self-aggrandizing, entitled, exploiting, empathy-impaired, unable to trust, free of guilt, manipulative, delusional, likely senile, and overtly sadistic. They also describe the tendency of some of these traits to grow ever worse through reinforcing cycles that seem to be underway. People, they suggest, who grow addicted to feeling special, and who indulge in paranoia can create circumstances for themselves that cause them to increase these tendencies.
As the Justice Department closes in on Trump, writes Gail Sheehy, “Trump’s survival instincts will propel him to a wag-the-dog war.” Of course, this builds in the assumptions that Trump stole the election and that we will all remain dogs, that we will start approving of Trump if he starts bombing more people. Certainly this has been the U.S. corporate media’s approach thus far. But need it be ours? The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists disapproves and has moved the doomsday clock closer to zero. The Council on Foreign Relations has begun listing the United States as a top threat to the United States. A Congressional committee has held a hearing on the danger of a Trumpian nuclear war (even while feigning impotence to do anything about it). It’s not beyond the realm of imagination that the U.S. public could refuse to cheer for more mass murder.
In this regard, certainly most past presidents have been more successful, not less, than Trump at what Robert J. Lifton calls the normalization of evil. He gives as an example the creation of the acceptance of torture. And certainly we’ve moved from Bush Jr. secretly torturing to Obama refusing to prosecute to Trump publicly supporting torture. But many still deem torture unacceptable. Hence this book’s assumption that the reader will agree that torture is evil. But murder by bomb or drone missile has been so normalized, including by Barack “I’m really good at killing people” Obama, that it’s passed over by this book as simply normal. Lifton does refer to the normalization of a nuclear threat during the (previous) Cold War, but seems to believe that phenomenon to be a problem of the past rather than one so successfully normalized that people don’t see it anymore.
Most of the symptoms found in Trump have existed in various degrees and combinations in past presidents and in past and current Congress members. But some of the symptoms seem to serve only as icing. That is, alone they are deemed unobjectionable, but in combination with others they point to severe sociopathy. Obama switched positions, lied, schemed, falsely marketed wars, reveled in the commission of murder, joked about using drone missiles on his daughter’s boyfriends, etc. But he spoke well, used a better vocabulary, avoided blatant racism, sexism, and personal bullying, didn’t seem to worship himself, didn’t brag about sexual assault, and so on.
My point, I very much wish it were needless to say, is not the equivalence of any president with another, but the normalization of illnesses in society as much as in individuals. This book goes after Trump for falsely claiming that Obama was spying on him. Yet the unconstitutional blanket surveillance of the NSA effectively means that Obama was indeed spying on everyone, including Trump. Sure, Trump was lying. Sure, Trump was paranoid. But if we avoid the larger reality, we’re lying too.
The symptoms from which Trump suffers may be taken as a guide to action by his followers, but they have long been understood to be an outline of the techniques of war propaganda. Dehumanization may be something Trump suffers from, but it’s also a necessary skill in persuading people to participate in war. Trump was given the presidential nomination by media outlets that asked primary candidates questions that included “Would you be willing to kill hundreds and thousands of innocent children?” Had a candidate said no, he or she would have been disqualified. The authors fault Trump for his joining the long list of presidents who have threatened to use nukes, but when Jeremy Corbyn said he wouldn’t use nukes, all hell broke loose in the UK, and his mental state was called into question there. Alzheimer’s may be a disease afflicting Trump, but when Bernie Sanders mentioned important bits of history like a coup in Iran in ’53, the television networks found something else to cover.
Is it possible that refusing to confront reality has been normalized so deeply that the authors join in it, or are required to by their agent or editor? Academic studies say the U.S. government is an oligarchy. These doctors say they want to defend the U.S. “democracy” from Trump. This book identifies Vladimir Putin as being essentially the same as Adolf Hitler, based on zero offered evidence, and treats Trump denials of colluding with Russia to steal an election as signs of dishonesty or delusion. But how do we explain most members of the Democratic Party believing in Russiagate without proof? How do we explain Iran being voted the biggest threat to peace in the world by Americans, while people in most countries, according to Gallup and Pew, give that honor to the United States? What are we to make of the vast majority of Americans claiming to “believe in” “God” and denying the existence of death? Isn’t climate denial child’s play beside that one, if we set aside the factor of normalization?
If a corporation or an empire or an athlete or a Hollywood action film were a person, it might be Donald Trump. But we all live in the world of corporations, empire, etc. We also apparently live in a world in which numerous men enjoy abusing women. That all these sexual harassers in the news, some of whom I am guessing are innocent but most of whom appear guilty, have convinced themselves that women don’t really mind the abuse can, I think, be only a small part of the explanation. The large part seems quite clearly to be that we live in a country of sadists. And shouldn’t they get a chance to elect someone who represents their point of view? Trump has been a public figure for decades, and most of his symptoms are nothing new, but he’s been protected and even rewarded throughout. Trump incites violence on Twitter, but Twitter will not disable Trump’s account. Congress is staring numerous documented impeachable offenses in the face, but chooses to look into only the one that lacks evidence but fuels war. The media, as noted, while remarkably improving on its enabling deference, still seems to give Trump the love he craves only when he brags about bombing people.
The U.S. Constitution is and has always been deeply flawed in many ways, but it did not intend to give any individual beyond-royal powers over the earth. I’ve always viewed the obsession with the emperor that this article I’m now writing feeds as part of the problem of transferring power to him. But the authors of The Dangerous Case are right that we have no choice but to focus on him now. All we’d need would be a Cuban Missile Crisis and our fate would be sealed. The Emperor Formerly Known As Executive should be given the powers of the British queen, not be replaced by an acceptable Democratic emperor. The first step should be using the Constitution.
Similar analyses of George W. Bush’s mental health, not to mention a laundry list of abuses and crimes, never resulted in any action against him. And despite this new book’s claim to defend “democracy” it does not use the word “impeachment.” Instead, it turns to the 25th Amendment which allows the president’s own subordinates to ask Congress to remove him from office. Perhaps because the likelihood of that happening is so extreme, and because further stalling and protecting of Trump is naturally a means of appearing “reasonable,” the authors propose a study be done (even though they’ve just written a book) and that it be done by Congress. But if Congress were to take up this matter, it could impeach Trump and remove him without asking permission of his cabinet or doing any investigations. In fact, it could impeach him for any of a number of the behaviors that are studied in this book.
The authors note that Trump has encouraged imitation of his outrages. We’ve seen that here in Charlottesville. They note that he’s also created the Trump Anxiety Disorder in those he frightens. I’m 100% on board with treating fear as a symptom to be cured.
In the fire-hose torrent of sexual harassment scandals we are staggering under these days, one thing stands out as a common factor in all the cases: The accused are men.
“One of the reasons it is men who harass women, and sometimes other men, is that this is about power and overwhelmingly (workplace) upper management is male, so the positions of power are disproportionately occupied by men and the bottom is disproportionately occupied by women,” says Abigail Saguy, professor of sociology and gender studies at UCLA and author of the 2003 book, What is Sexual Harassment?
You may be thinking at this point… well, duh, this is something we all know instinctively. Women don’t do this kind of thing — grope, talk dirty, assault, sexually coerce, even rape their work colleagues. It’s a Y chromosome kind of thing, right?
But not so fast. Franklin Raddish, a South Carolina Baptist pastor with a nationwide following, last month declared, as a means of supporting Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (who lost Tuesday), that accusations of sexual harassment against men in politics and Hollywood amounted to a “war on men.”
“More women are sexual predators than men,” opined Raddish. “Women are chasing young boys up and down the road, but we don’t hear about that because it’s not PC.”
He provided no evidence of this because, well, there isn’t any.
Still, there are exceptions that prove the rule: On Friday, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Kansas dropped out of her race after The Kansas City Star found out she had been accused in a 2005 lawsuit of sexually harassing and retaliating against a male subordinate who rejected her advances when she was a corporate executive.
….
Which leads to the question: What are the numbers on women accused of sexual harassment? Has anyone conducted scientific surveys and found some? What’s the reason why it appears the vast majority of people accused of workplace sexual harassment are men?
And what’s the reason few men ever file formal complaints?
“Pride gets in the way,” says Todd Harrison, a partner in a California firm that handles thousands of employment-law cases per year. “Most good plaintiffs attorneys who handle discrimination and harassment claims take on female-to-male harassment and the same (laws) apply. It’s just a matter of whether the men who are victims want to come forward.”
There are few numbers available about women sexual harassers, and some of the numbers available are more than a decade old.
“It is extremely rare — it does happen but it is extremely rare,” says Genie Harrison, a Los Angeles-based attorney who specializes in workplace sexual-harassment cases. “Men can be victims and women can be abusers, and I’ve represented victims where a woman was the harasser, but I would say it’s at best a 99.9%-to-.01% ratio.”
Various government agencies, such as the military, the federal employee system or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, keep track of complaints of workplace sexual harassment but they generally focus on the accusers, not the accused.
— In the most recent data available from the EEOC, there were 6,758 complaints of sexual harassment allegations received by the commission in 2016, and a little more than 16% were filed by men. But the data don’t say who did the harassing — a woman or another man.
Moreover, EEOC data do not provide a comprehensive picture of the entire country. Plus, the agency estimates that most people, male or female, who have experienced harassment (more than 80%) never file a formal complaint about it.
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Emily Martin, general counsel and vice president for workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, who handles workplace sexual harassment issues, agrees that women harassers are a “minority of cases” because women are less likely to exercise power over men at work.
“I’ve never worked with a client where a woman was the harasser; we’re a women’s-rights organization so the individuals who tend to reach out to us are women,” Martin says. “And women who target other women (for harassment) is an unusual fact pattern.”
Jennifer Berdahl, a professor in the business school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver who studies the harassment of men, says harassment is also about gender and how society defines it. Males learn a sense of superiority over females from the time they are children, she says.
Being a man means being superior to a woman and dominating women sexually or otherwise; sexual harassment is taking that (thinking) to an extreme,” Berdahl says. “It’s possible there’s a rare woman who might get off on dominating a person like that but men are socialized from the age of 3 to think of themselves as being ‘a real man,’ defined as dominating women.”
In her research, she says, she’s found that the most common way a woman would harass a man is to question his manhood. For many men, she says, being scorned as “feminine” or “weak” is too humiliating to report.
Another source of limited data on women harassers: Law firms that specialize in employment law and sexual harassment cases, such as Perona, Langer, Beck, Serbin, Mendoza & Harrison in Long Beach, Calif.
Todd Harrison, a partner in the firm, estimates he handles about 150 cases of employment law a year, and about 65% of them are sex harassment cases. Of those, 10% — or less than 10 cases per year — involve women as the accused harassers, he said.
“Sexual harassment is not just about sexual innuendo or jokes or pats on the butt, it’s about power and intimidation, so the cases I’ve handled (involving women harassers), it’s normally a woman in a control position and using that power to intimidate men,” Harrison says.
“Sometimes there are sexual overtures, inappropriate touching without consent, offers for quid pro quo or sex for promotion,” he added. “A lot of times it’s a powerful woman in an organization who will talk down or treat a man different from his female counterparts.”
But men can be reluctant to come forward to complain due to fear of mockery, he says. Men may also buy into the notion that female-on-male harassment isn’t even possible.
“Embarrassment is always an issue,” Harrison says. “Societal norms say men are supposed to be able to handle this. But we have men (clients) who say, ‘It’s just not fair. We’re always accused of it, here’s a situation where we’ve been victimized by a person in authority.’ ”
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— Maria Puente, USA Today, Women are Rarely Accused of Sexual Harassment, and There’s a Reason Why, December 18, 2017
My partner, Amy Gustin, had a great idea the other day. This is not at all unusual for her. A lot of my columns begin with one of her great ideas, and this is one of them. The other day, Amy was perusing some books about the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet while contemplating the flora and fauna of Ice Age Europe, and speculating about the Paleolithic origins of certain pagan European Christmas symbols, when she said this: “Environmentalists should take over Christmas.”
“What?” I replied. She explained that a lot of European pagan Christmas symbols celebrate the Boreal Forest and an arctic climate. We have Christmas trees. Christmas is the only time of year when snow is popular, and Santa lives at the North Pole and gets around on a sled pulled by caribou. All of these things remind us of the arctic, and they should remind us that the arctic is undergoing dramatic changes due to global climate change.
Can you think of a better symbol for global climate change than Santa Claus? First, he drives a zero-emission, carbon-neutral vehicle, and he’s been doing it for centuries. Second, everything Santa owns faces imminent destruction, unless we can stop the sea ice from shrinking. Santa, Mrs. Claus, all of the elves and the whole toy factory are headed straight for a watery grave at the bottom of the ocean unless we stop global warming now.
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Coca-Cola has done a great job of making the polar bear into a symbol of Christmas, and we should adopt that symbol wholeheartedly. Instead of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, put a mother polar bear and her two cubs in your nativity scene. I’m all for wise men, if you can find any, but how wise can your men be if they’re standing next to a hungry polar bear?
The global climate crisis effects everyone, and it’s time to make Christmas into a holiday for everyone. From now on, Christmas is about the North Pole and the gift of a stable climate. Being born doesn’t get you a holiday, in my book. Jesus has a holiday — it’s the one he lived and died for, and Christians should go ahead and do Easter big. But Christmas is too important to let Christians hog it to themselves. Besides, Christmas is better without Jesus.
We’ve still got Santa Claus, but now Christmas is about saving Santa. We’ve got reindeer and sleigh bells, snow and Christmas trees and we’ve got all of the animals coming together to help their friend the polar bear. We’ve got the Nutcracker to help us crack the nut of global climate change, and we can re-edit the Charlie Brown Christmas Special so that Linus’ big speech reflects the holiday’s bold new direction. Everything you love about Christmas will still be there for you, but now Christmas has a mission.
Witness the interview between CNN’s Jake Tapper and Moore spokesman Ted Crockett on Tuesday afternoon. Crockett responded “probably” when Tapper pressed him on whether Moore believed homosexuality should be illegal. Then came this exchange between Tapper and Crockett over Muslims serving in Congress. I’m excerpting a big chunk of it because, well, you’ll see.
TAPPER: Judge Moore has also said that he doesn’t think a Muslim member of Congress should be allowed to be in Congress. Why? Under what provision of the Constitution?
CROCKETT: Because you have to swear on the Bible — when you are before — I had to do it. I’m an elected official, three terms, I had to swear on a Bible. You have to swear on a Bible to be an elected official in the United States of America. He alleges that a Muslim cannot do that, ethically, swearing on the Bible.
TAPPER: You don’t actually have to swear on a Christian bible, you can swear on anything, really. I don’t know if you knew that. You can swear on a Jewish Bible.
CROCKETT: Oh no. I swore on the Bible. I’ve done it three times.
TAPPER: I’m sure you have, I’m sure you’ve picked a Bible but the law is not that you have to swear on a Christian Bible. That is not the law. You don’t know that? All right. Ted Crockett with the Moore —
CROCKETT: I don’t know. I know that Donald Trump did it when he — when we made him President.
TAPPER: Because he’s Christian and he picked it. That’s what he wanted to swear in on. Ted Crockett with the Moore campaign. Good luck tonight. Thank you so much for being here. My panel will react when we get back
Just when I think I have heard EVERYTHING, a Christian fanatic will send me an email such as the one that follows. According to the letter writer, contrary to what we know to be true about rape, pedophilia, and sexual assault, most perpetrators are actually angry ovulating females. Let that sink in for a moment. You see, ladies, it is men who are being harassed and molested, not women. It is men who must constantly be aware of their surroundings lest a woman jump out of the bushes and rape them. Birth control, according to the letter writer, has turned women into predatory animals who seek to sexually dominate men.
I suspect the letter writer is a Roman Catholic. What better way to deflect attention from the Catholic church’s sex scandal than to suggest that most sex crimes are perpetrated by women, not men. Countless children and teenagers have been sexually abused by Catholic priests, yet, according to the letter writer, the REAL scandal is sexual abuse at the hands of birth-control-using women.
Here’s an excerpt from the letter writer’s three-thousand-word tome:
(To Eliminate Majority of Rape Just Ban Birth control)
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (the statistical agency of the injustice department) states: “Approximately 95% of all youth reporting staff sexual misconduct said they had been victimized by female staff. In 2008, 42% of staff in state juvenile facilities were female.”
This disproves the idea that women are more likely to molest children just because they are around them more often and have more access. No. The statistical data shows that even when the pagan women have less access to children and are less than half of the staff in juvenile prisons they end up committing a staggering 95% of child rapes. So shocking is this statistic that journalist Laura Burke of the Texas Observer out of curiosity decided to contact the justice bureau of her home state of Texas concerning the figures of female victimization of youth, since she knows that ‘nationally’ 42% of staff in child prisons are females, and that in Texas 50% of juvenile hall staff employees are females (in the Texas Youth Commission, which is the biggest chain of child prisons in Texas and dominates almost 100% of youth prisons there); now this is what she said in regard to her inquiry: “The justice bureau will not release percentage breakdowns of sexual offenses by female employees in Texas, or at individual facilities. The bureau cites confidentiality as the reason.”
Birth control creates the female pagan child predator epidemic. Women who use it are such beasts of impurity that they are driven to murder in the 1st degree in an act of ultimate betrayal the children they conceive. This vicious act utterly permanently destroys their maternal (and feminine) instincts. Contraception murders already conceived children. It prevents them from attaching themselves to the womb after conception when they travel to that place. It would also seem there are tons of female sodomites (no doubt themselves child killers) in action too, because 14% of juvenile hall youth are females and this figure in general has not changed since 1997 and yet 95% of all minors reporting child molestation say female staff did it. So statistically this means male staff are less likely to molest girls than their female staff counterparts, despite constituting over half of the staff in juvenile prisons. This tells us that it’s very much possible the majority of the female pedophiles in juvenile hall are sodomites and that the remainder who are not sodomites are nonetheless guilty of child murder (and that being a murderess of children is what drove sodomite women to be sodomite in the first place). It’s scientifically undeniable, birth control turns women into pedophiles. Young males in detention are being sexually assaulted more so by female guards and caretakers than females in detention by male guards. Female staffers are more likely to committ [sic] sexual assault and rape inmates than male staffers.
Female staff committ [sic] more forcible sexual assualt [sic] than male staff; indeed females committ [sic] 86% of it according to the 2012 BJS report of staff indecent misconduct in juvenile hall. Here is a situation in which women in complete power have no hesitation using it to hurt children. It shows that when presented with the opportunity women will rape and this should raise concerns not only about female staff in juvenile prisons, but women in general because women have much greater access to children than men. This means that people should suspect all contracepting [sic] women of being child rapists or potential child rapists and at the very least, as pedophiles. I repeat; women who use birth control are either active child predators, a developing child molester, or a child molester in training. Statistics do away with the ridiculous notion that sexual violence is always or mostly male-on-female assaults.
The epidemic of woman predators molesting school children is so bad that even CBS News has a well-updated special section on their website dedicated to showing the profile photos of teacher female molesters and briefly mentioning the details of their child molestations.
According to Richard Nixon’s Commission on Obscenity for every female prostitute there are 9 underage male prostitutes. Birth control turns women into pedophiles. An extensive study in Canada found that high rates of homeless children are being molested. Staggeringly, 3/4 of the molestations of boys were done by adult women.Arguably, pagan female child killers (among whom are many woman sodomites) are more intense in their child lust than male sodomites.
With prescience Giuseppe Cardinal Siri (His Holiness Pope Gregory XVII) wrote on June 12th, 1960 the epistle “Notification Concerning Men’s Dress worn By Women”. Logically outlining the evil effects of women wearing pants, he said it leads to “the rising of the primary instincts” which “push forward to uncontrolled acts.” For such a change of clothing “helps to diminish the vital defenses of the sense of shame” or “obstructs that sense” and “when this sense of shame is absent because of some obstacle or impediment, then the relations between men and women degrade to pure sensuality devoid of all mutual respect and esteem.” He also says: “Experience teaches us that when the woman is de-feminized, then defenses are undermined and weakness increases.” He added: “What can these women give their children when they have worn trousers for so long that their self-esteem is determined more by their competition with men than by their function as women?”
Indeed, the feminism heresy (of which contraception and wearing men’s clothing is a part) turns women into pedophiles. The statistics robustly go on. Apart from raping boys, pagan women harlots also love raping men, gang raping men, kidnapping and raping them; especially if the male victim is a handicap or blind or immobile or non-verbal or unconcious [sic] or sedated or restrained.
These swine love to abuse the role of “care giver.” 12 years ago one careerist pedophile with the usual indiscretion, candor of snobbery and mockery, said: “Had an incident the other day, a pt. had a tight foreskin. First i couldn’t get the thing to go back, THEN couldn’t get it to go back over!! What didn’t help matters is that there wasn’t much to take hold of. Plus 5 sets of eyeballs watching.” Indeed, one only need peruse the blogs owned by nurses (which will not be named here because they are awful and moreover frequently criticized by doctor blogs and websites and a few nurse blogs as unprofessional and incredibly damaging to the profession) to discover their unladylike strange appetites; their supercilious ribaldry and shocking amount of inappropriate comments they make regarding the physique of boy patients, their belittling comments; detraction, their disturbingly fanatic attraction to minors, their fascination with personal areas of the body, their frank admissions of how they love it when they do “physicals” on boys, how they love to undress them and digitally penetrate the male part of boys with a catheter while the person is drugged under sedation (and in most cases then removing it prior to the child awaking, who never find out that they were undressed and lost their virginity) and this undoubtedly would constitute rape (this also happens to male adult patients). They also constantly love to gloat and bask in their status of total impunity and predation, the wide culture of acceptance of these deviancies, and how co-workers with ogling eyes watch and even participate in it. Any place of care of the vulnerable has always been a magnet for these types of perverts, who take pleasure in the degradation, hurt and humiliation of their victims. Indeed 6 female Minnesota teens at a nursing home raped their elderly patients. I mean, high school girls unleashed their devastating desires on the elderly, presumably after taking birth control.
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SHOCKER: MORE MEN ARE VICTIMS OF RAPE THAN WOMEN
“More men are raped in the US than women, figures on prison assaults reveal: “More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons. In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures. That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison.”
Sexual misconduct is not an uncommon complaint to state boards of nursing. 38 to 52 percent of nurses report knowledge of colleagues who have had sexual misconduct with patients. The NCSBN reports that in some states sexual activity with a consenting adult patient is considered a criminal offense (since it is statutory rape for a person in a position of trust to use it for lewd activity).
According to individual state boards of nursing disciplinary records; the ratio of female nurses committing boundary violations as compared to male nurses is 26/1. That is for every male nurse that has sex with his patient, 26 female nurses have done so as well.
CONTRACEPTING FEMALE PAGAN (HARLOTS) CAN BE MORE VIOLENT THAN MEN
Contracepting female [sic] are just as violent, if not more violent than their male counterparts: “It has often been claimed that the reason CTS studies have found as many women as men to be physically aggressive is because women are defending themselves against attack. A number of studies have addressed this issue and found that when asked, more women than men report initiating the attack.” According to CDC study: “Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.”
USA FLAG INSPIRES FEMALES TO BE CHILD MOLESTERS
Another factor driving female pedophilia is venerating the anti-Christian USA flag whose tricolor represents the condemned rebellious masonic slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity” under which millions of Christians were murdered (it represents man against God and the overthrow of Christian order and Monarchy which uphold inequality). This purges all their moral sensibilities, drives them to lust and therefore birth control and child molestation. After speaking to a rebellious foul-mouthed heretic in the South who audaciously pretends to be Catholic, I should point out in regard to the tricolor, that anti-Christian France and the USA republic are masonic creations. Both colonial and French freemasons [sic] collaborated in fomenting the revolution in America (1775-1783) and France (1789-1799); so the significance of the tricolor ‘red, white, and blue’ as representing the heresy ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ remains. When adopted and used by masons, it carries a particular meaning; in the same way that the rainbow though given to mankind by God as a sign of peace and promise that he would never destroy the world again with a flood; when that symbol is used by secular religion it takes on a whole different meaning, namely, the total repudiation of Marriage and the family, which is the lifelong union of man and the woman. When the Cross is used by Christianity it signifies Christ but when used by American religion especially on gravesites [sic] of the USA missionaries (I.e soldiers) it represents the condemned doctrine of ‘universal salvation.’ When Christians use the upside down Cross on the Feast of St. Peter it represents his upsidedown [sic] crucifixion martyrdom, but when used outside that context it represents Satanism. The more pagan woman tries to conform to the women of Christianity (the only authentic standard of womanhood) the better; for pagan women would not generally be harlots and murderesses of innocent children in the 1st place.
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I think I can now safely say that women really are to blame for EVERYTHING! Pity us men. It is unsafe for us to even leave our homes with female sexual predators prowling about seeking to drop their pants and ride every man in America. Men must demand action be taken by law enforcement to protect them from angry, ovulating, birth-control-popping, child-molesting, rapist females.
Or we can safely assume that the writer of the aforementioned screed is bat-shit crazy, a Roman Catholic loon who hates women. What say ye, female readers? Has the letter writer exposed the truth about women — that it is women, not men, who commit most sexual crimes? Please share your angry, hormone-driven, birth-controlled thoughts in the comment section.
My partner, Amy Gustin, had a great idea the other day. This is not at all unusual for her. A lot of my columns begin with one of her great ideas, and this is one of them. The other day, Amy was perusing some books about the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet while contemplating the flora and fauna of Ice Age Europe, and speculating about the Paleolithic origins of certain pagan European Christmas symbols, when she said this: “Environmentalists should take over Christmas.”
