Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick needs to move on. While racism may have played a part in his inability to get a gig six years ago, today that is no longer the case. Kaepernick is thirty-five and hasn’t played in six years. He will be of no help to the New York Jets.
The United States has an immigration problem. Democrat denial of this fact only makes the border crisis worse.
If you harass someone just so you can record a clip for your YouTube channel and end up getting shot, I don’t feel sorry for you. Personal space, Dude. I may not shoot you, but I will club you with my cane.
Ohio 2023. A high school football coach ran a play called “Nazi” against their predominantly Jewish opponent. He has since resigned, but I do wonder how he (and his players) thought this was a good idea. Heil Hitler!
My best “hot” take for today is my partner Polly. She’s still hot in my eyes.
Republicans seem hyper-focused on President Biden’s age, yet ignore Trump’s age. Why is that? I’m for term and age limits. Neither of them should be running for office. But, here we are, so if Biden is the candidate in the general election, I’m voting for him.
MSNBC has become the official campaign organ for President Joe Biden. In their eyes, Grandpa Joe is a spry, sharp-as-a-tack old man. His age, cognitive ability, and physical wellness are issues of importance. Not the most important, but must be considered when voting in 2024.
Most opiate-related deaths are due to Fentanyl and other illegal street drugs. Yet, the FDA, doctors, and pharmacists continue to wage war against legal prescription narcotics users. Once again, a pharmacist refused to fill my prescription, even though I tried to fill it on the day my doctor wrote on the script. Nope. I had to wait five days. This time, I drove to Michigan and bought some cannabis to tide me over. Thanks, pharmacist, I am now a drug addict. 🙂
Everything I eat, drink, or breathe is bad for me. So bad, in fact, that I should have died before I was born.
My mom killed herself 30+ years ago. I still miss her. In moments of deep reflection, I think of how much Mom would have enjoyed our grandchildren; that she would have been thrilled that most of them are avid readers. Suicide leaves a scar that never totally heals. So much is lost the moment a loved one says “No Mas.”
Bonus: The Cincinnati Reds will not make it to the playoffs this year. Coming off a hundred-loss season last year, the Reds have played well above their pay grade. Last night’s win guarantees a winning season — far above my expectations. Next year is THE year. Of course, I’ve been saying this for over forty years. Hope springs eternal. 🙂
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.
A Christian man named Andy Miller sent me a short, succinct email today. Here’s what Miller had to say:
If you have left all tenants [sic] of faith, why do you care, except to build up yourself?
I know, I know. Sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh.”)Child, please. Just another email from someone who has made no effort to understand my story. But, it’s a cold, rainy fall day in O-h-i-o. Why not give Miller the answer he so richly deserves? Evidence suggests Miller is affiliated with the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement.
Dear Andy,
The key to you understanding me is to actually read my writing. Based on what I can tell from this site’s server logs, you read all of one post before emailing me, The Scandalous Life of Jack Hyles and Why it Still Matters. You spent all of two minutes reading this article. You didn’t read the About page or any of my autobiographical material. No one, of course, is obligated to read anything before contacting me, but if you want to be taken as a thoughtful, honest interlocutor, it pays to do your homework.
I have not left all tenets of “faith.” What I have left is organized religion in general, and Christianity in particular. I have carefully weighed the central claims of Christianity in the balance and found them wanting. I am still a person of “faith.” By faith, I trust that science is the best tool for understanding our natural world. By faith, based on forty-five years of evidence and awesome rolls in the hay, I believe my partner, Polly, loves me. I live in a technologically advanced world; one which requires expertise beyond my abilities. By faith, I trust experts to tell me the truth about things I lack sufficient knowledge to understand. Son #3 is a certified mechanic. While I used to do ALL of my own repair work, I can no longer do so. My knowledge of automobile repair stopped growing in the early 2000s. When I have a car problem, I call my son. Why? He’s the expert, so I put my faith in him to tell me the truth.
Here’s my point, all of us are people of “faith,” to some degree or another. Most of us try to have what I call “reasoned faith.” None of us is a limitless dispenser of knowledge — though I try to convince my grandchildren that I am. 🙂 We rely on others, especially experts, to help us navigate our world.
While I no longer have the requisite faith necessary to believe the claims of Christianity are true, my ongoing objections have little to do with “faith.” If the Andy Millers of the world want to gather together on Sundays to worship a dead Jewish man with blood cult rituals, have at it. If they want to plaster their homes, yards, and autos with Christian signs, bumper stickers, creches, and Jesus Junk®, have at it. If they want to home-school their children or send them to private Christian schools, have at it. If they want to evangelize sinners on public sidewalks, have it. I have no problem with personal acts of piety. Each to their own, right?
However, when it comes to trying to overthrow the U.S. government, establish a theocracy, subvert the Constitution, take over public schools, indoctrinate children, or force others to live by your interpretations of an ancient religious text, I care — and I care a lot. Polly and I are parents to six adult children and grandparents to thirteen munchkins. I am sixty-six years old. I doubt I will make it to seventy. So, my focus is on what world I will leave behind for those that I love. I care a lot about their future. I care about what they are taught in school. I oppose any and all attempts to passive-aggressively force them to participate in release programs such as Lifewise Academy. I oppose any and all attempts to mandate school prayer, Bible reading, and posting the Ten Commandments. I want my grandchildren taught science, and not religion — creationism and intelligent design — masquerading as science. I want them taught the birds and the bees, and not here’s-an-aspirin-put-it-between-your-knees-and-just-say-no. I demand LGBTQ people receive equal protection under the law, receiving the same freedom, liberty, and justice as everyone else. I oppose book bans, music bans, play bans, beer bans, clothing bans, and countless other issues that seem to rile Evangelicals these days.
So you see, Andy, I care because these things matter — at least to me, anyway. You seem to think that I no longer have a right to protest these egregious affronts to our democracy and social order; that once I left Christianity I no longer had a right to say anything. I may have left Christianity, but Christianity sure hasn’t left me. Frankly, I can’t get away from it. And as long as Evangelicalism is hellbent on damaging and controlling my life and that of my family and friends, I intend to publicly push back.
Andy, you made no effort to know the man, the myth, the legend, Bruce Almighty, yet you felt qualified to judge my motives; that the reason I write is to build myself up — whatever the hell that means. “Build up” implies gain. What, exactly, have I gained by telling my story and critiquing Evangelical Christianity over the past sixteen years? I make no money to speak of from my writing. I receive donations via Patreon and Paypal, but these pay costs, and may, if I have a good donation year, allow Polly and me to eat a meal at a fancy restaurant and spend the night in a hotel. By the time I pay taxes on my blog donations — yep, donations are taxable — most years are a wash.
While I have an ever-increasing readership and loyal support from a number of readers — both of which are metaphorical jolts of adrenaline for me — I also attract a lot of negative attention. Hate mail. Death threats. Attacks on my spouse and our family. I am routinely battered and abused by people who allege follow the Prince of Peace. I would shutter this blog today if it wasn’t for the fact that the things mentioned above matter to me.
The only thing I have built up since I deconverted is my credit card balances and the number of shoes, fedoras, and Charles Tyrwhitt shirts I wear. I am sure you meant something else by your attack on my character, but I will leave it to you to explain yourself.
Do better, Andy, do better.
Saved by Reason,
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.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In 2022, David Walther, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock, Texas, was accused of distribution, receipt, transportation, and possession of child pornography. Faith Baptist is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship.
David Lloyd Walther, 56, of Georgetown, was arrested on Thursday and charged with distribution, receipt, transportation and possession of child pornography, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.
Walther told an FBI agent that “he had a pornography addiction and would often go through cycles ofdownloading and viewing pornography depicting both adults and minors,” the complaint said.
He also said that he would download child pornography files, “but would often feel guilty and go through a ‘purging’ of files, i.e., deleting the images and associated files, because he knew it was wrong, and that he last purged files on November 08, 2022, the night before the search warrants were served,” according to the complaint.
Walther was a pastor at the Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock for the past 18 years, said David Clawson, a deacon at the church.
“We regret anything along these lines that has happened,” Clawson said on Friday about the charges against Walther. “The church will continue to move forward as God has led,” Clawson said. He declined further comment.
“The criminal complaint alleges that Walther downloaded and made available child pornography using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing network,” the release said. It said this happened when Walther, who is a Georgetown resident, was still a pastor.
When authorities searched Walther’s home and vehicle on Thursday, they found two large computer hard drives that contained child pornography, the release said.
Walther told authorities that he didn’t know he was sharing child pornography through the BitTorrent network and also apologized “for his actions,” the complaint said.
He said when he viewed the child pornography the children in it were between 8 and 17 years old, according to the complaint.
According to the affidavit, which Law&Crime is not sharing in this instance because of how detailed it is, the pastor had a “BDSM” folder containing an image of a nude boy with a collar on his neck and being sexually abused, a similar image of a female toddler, and images of nude young boys and girls being restrained by ropes and tools. A “Zoo” folder allegedly contained a bestiality video involving a dog and a female toddler “likely less than three years old.”
The feds allege that the defendant also downloaded several videos through BitTorrent showing young girls being sexually abused by adult men.
Walther has been scrubbed from his church’s website.
Last July, Walther pleaded guilty to an enhanced charge of possession of child sex abuse images.
A Texas pastor pleaded guilty to an enhanced charge of possession of child sex abuse images after he admitted having downloaded some of the materials at his church, according to federal prosecutors and court documents.
David Lloyd Walther, 57, “knowingly searched for, downloaded, distributed and possessed” child sex abuse images, some of which depicted prepubescent minors, on a peer-to-peer file sharing network while he was the pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock, a city 18 miles north of Austin, the U.S. attorney’s office for Western Texas said Thursday.
Walther was arrested Nov. 9 after a search of his home and car turned up two large computer hard drives with more than 100,000 images and more than 5,000 videos of child sex abuse material, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
….
He pleaded guilty in federal court in Austin on June 27, court records show.
Walther could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
It was not immediately clear when he would be sentenced. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office said a sentencing date had not yet been scheduled.
In a statement, Worth Carroll, an attorney representing Walther, said: “David’s guilty plea is the next step in the healing process after he experienced horrendous childhood abuse where ‘trusted adults’ and the system repeatedly failed to protect him. Since his arrest, David and his family have courageously worked to confront his own abuse, address how he was neglected and abused, and begin making amends for the harm he has caused. I am proud of him, encouraged by the work he has done, and amazed by the love and compassion of his family.”
Last Wednesday, Walther was sentenced to seventy months in prison.
A Georgetown man was sentenced in a federal court in Austin on Wednesday to 70 months in prison [5.8 years] and 10 years of supervised release for an enhanced charge of possession of child pornography.
According to court documents, David Lloyd Walther, 57, knowingly searched for, downloaded, distributed and possessed child sexual abuse material, including child pornography—some of which depicted prepubescent minors—using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing network. During a search of Walther’s home and vehicle in November 2022, two large computer hard drives were located and found to contain more than 100,000 images and more than 5,000 videos of child sexual abuse material. At the time of his arrest, Walther was the pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock.
In addition to the prison and supervised release terms, the judge also ordered Walther to pay restitution of $61,000.
“Many families in the Round Rock area placed their trust in this man when he served as a leader in faith for their community,” said U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza for the Western District of Texas. “I hope that those families can find comfort in knowing our law enforcement partners and justice system are committed to protecting them, ensuring that predators such as Walther cannot continue to pose a threat to innocent children.”
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.
The Official Independent Baptist Rulebook, Known in Some Churches as Church Standards
Thou shalt obey the pastor at all times
Thou shalt obey all adults at all times if you are a child or teenager
Thou shalt obey your husband at all times if you are a woman
Thou shalt obey your parents at all times
Thou shalt obey the police and government unless the pastor says it is a sin against God to do so
Thou shalt tithe
Thou shalt give an offering
Thou shalt give a faith promise missionary offering
Thou give an offering any time the pastor says God is saying to collect a special offering
Thou shalt attend church every time the doors are open
Thou shalt read the Bible every day
Thou shalt pray every day
Thou shalt pray without ceasing
Thou shalt pray for every meal, but ice cream at Dairy Queen after church requires no prayer
Thou shalt only use the King James Bible — 1611 edition which is really the 1769 revision
Thou shalt only use the Scofield King James Bible
Thou shalt not have long hair (over your ears, collar) if you are a man
Thou shalt not have a block cut hairstyle if you are a man
Thou shalt not have facial hair if you are a man, but if you are a woman you can have facial hair
Thou shalt not have tattoos unless you have prison tats from your life before Christ
Thou shalt not take the hem out of your Levi jeans or alter your clothing in any way so that you look worldly
Thou shalt not wear pants (britches) if you are a woman
Thou shalt not wear shorts, but a woman can wear Baptist shorts — also known as culottes
Thou shalt not expose any flesh if you are a woman, especially your thighs, breasts, or back
Thou shalt only wear dresses with hemlines below the knees if you are a woman
Thou shalt not have any physical contact with the opposite sex if you are unmarried
Thou shalt not masturbate
Thou shalt not have more than one hole in each ear if you are a woman
Thou shalt not pierce any body part except your ear, and then only if you are a woman
Thou shalt not watch TV, but if you are a carnal Christian and must watch TV thou shalt only watch Little House on the Prairie or Bonanza
Thou shalt not go to the movie theater, but using streaming services is okay
Thou shalt always have tracts in your shirt pocket or purse, ready to evangelize at a moment’s notice
Thou shalt drive a car with church advertising stickers, IFB cliches, or Bible verses attached to the bumper
Thou shalt park down the street when visiting the local strip club or whore house lest the pastor know you are there and stay away
Thou shalt not dance
Thou shalt not listen to secular music, especially rock music, which is from the pit of hell
Thou shalt not listen to contemporary Christian music (CCM)
Thou shalt not smoke tobacco
Thou shalt not drink fermented alcohol — after all, Jesus drank Welch’s grape juice
Thou shalt not dip snuff
Thou shalt not chew tobacco
Thou shalt not cuss, but saying darn, shoot, crap, freaking, and fudge are okay
Thou shalt not date non-Independent Baptist girls or boys
Thou shalt not have any non-Independent Baptist friends
Thou shalt home school your children or send them to a Christian school
Thou shalt only read pastor-approved Christian books
Thou shalt never speak in tongues
Thou shalt only believe what the pastor says you are to believe
Thou shalt go soulwinning every week
Thou shalt say you have victory over sin, even if you are lying
Thou shalt adhere to the perception is reality rule
Thou shalt send your kids to the same Christian college the pastor went to
Thou shalt leave the church if you commit adultery, get a divorce, or get pregnant outside of marriage
Thou shalt believe everything the pastor says even when you are certain he is lying, speaking evangelistically, or embellishing his illustrations
Thou shalt wear a bra if you are a woman, and it can only be a white, underwire bra
Thou shalt not mix bathe (Baptist for swimming with the opposite sex)
Thou shalt not go to amusement parks unless the youth group is going
Thou shalt not go to the prom
Thou shalt not show emotion unless praising Jesus from 10:00 am to noon on Sunday or giving a testimony during Sunday evening service
Thou shalt say AMEN during at the appropriate time during the pastor’s sermon, especially when he shouts, pounds the pulpit, or performs gymnastics
Thou shalt not be angry even though the pastor is allowed to be angry, but that’s because his anger is righteous anger
Thou shalt be for what the pastor is for and against what the pastor is against, because if you don’t, a bear might come out of the woods and eat you
Thou shalt never use your brain
Thou shalt ignore any science that contradicts the Bible
Thou shalt never try to fix your own problems because the pastor is the official fixer of all problems
Thou shalt takes notes on the sermon even if the rabbit wanders five miles off the trail or the sermon is incoherent
Thou shalt always tell the pastor what a wonderful sermon he preached, even when you have no idea what he was talking about
Thou shalt always tell Sister Bertha what a wonderful job she did with her off-key rendition of What a Friend we Have in Jesus
Thou shalt not use canned (taped) music for music specials
Thou shall not play the guitar or drums
Please be advised that this rulebook is subject to change at the whim of the pastor. He is the man of God who speaks for God. He alone is allowed to change his mind. This means that God changed his mind, yes?
Of course not.
This is the Christianity of millions of North Americans.
Is it any wonder that we are fucked up?
Feel free to add your own additions to the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Rule Book.
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.
When Joe Biden flew out of Hanoi on Sept. 11, he was leaving a country where U.S. warfare caused roughly 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths. But like every other president since the Vietnam War, he gave no sign of remorse. In fact, Biden led up to his visit by presiding over a White House ceremony that glorified the war as a noble effort.
Presenting the Medal of Honor on Sept. 5 to former Army pilot Larry L. Taylor for bravery during combat, Biden praised the veteran with effusive accolades for risking his life in Vietnam to rescue fellow soldiers from “the enemy.” But that heroism was 55 years ago. Why present the medal on national television just days before traveling to Vietnam?
The timing reaffirmed the shameless pride in the U.S. war on Vietnam that one president after another has tried to render as history. You might think that — after killing such a vast number of people in a war of aggression based on continuous deceptions — some humility and even penance would be in order.
But no. As George Orwell put it, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And a government that intends to continue its might-makes-right use of military power needs leaders who do their best to distort history with foggy rhetoric and purposeful omissions. Lies and evasions about past wars are prefigurative for future wars.
And so, at a press conference in Hanoi, the closest Biden came to acknowledging the slaughter and devastation inflicted on Vietnam by the U.S. military was this sentence: “I’m incredibly proud of how our nations and our people have built trust and understanding over the decades and worked to repair the painful legacy the war left on both our nations.”
In the process, Biden was pretending there was an equivalency of suffering and culpability for both countries, a popular pretense for commanders in chief ever since the first new one after the Vietnam War ended.
Two months into his presidency in early 1977, Jimmy Carter was asked at a news conference if he felt “any moral obligation to help rebuild that country.” Carter replied firmly: “Well, the destruction was mutual. You know, we went to Vietnam without any desire to capture territory or to impose American will on other people. We went there to defend the freedom of the South Vietnamese. And I don’t feel that we ought to apologize or to castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability.”
Carter added, “I don’t feel that we owe a debt, nor that we should be forced to pay reparations at all.”
In other words, no matter how many lies it tells or how many people it kills, being the United States government means never having to say you’re sorry.
When George H.W. Bush celebrated the U.S. victory in the 1991 Gulf War, he proclaimed: “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” Bush meant that the triumphant killing of Iraqi people — estimated at 100,000 in six weeks — had ushered in American euphoria about military action that promised to wipe away hesitation to launch future wars.
From Carter to Biden, presidents have never come anywhere near providing an honest account of the Vietnam War. None could imagine engaging in the kind of candor that Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg provided when he said: “It wasn’t that we were on the wrong side. We were the wrong side.”
….
Does such history really matter now? Absolutely. Efforts to portray the U.S. government’s military actions as well-meaning and virtuous are incessant. The pretenses that falsify the past are foreshadowing excuses for future warfare.
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.
It has been exactly ten years since Williamstown, Kentucky, underwrote $62.5m worth of bonds that made possible the building of Ark Encounter. This anniversary seems the perfect opportunity for Ken Ham to (finally) apologize for the fact that his big unseaworthy boat has not come close to producing the attendance numbers and economic impact that Answers in Genesis (AiG) promised in seeking support from this little town.
….
Of course, Ken is a busy guy, fighting the atheists and secularists who, as he said on Facebook this past weekend, “are becoming increasingly intolerant of Christianity—in fact, trying to outlaw the Christian worldview in many places.”
….
Because he is so busy warring against the forces of evil, I wrote the following letter on his behalf. And Ken, there’s no need to thank me. Just sign your name and send it along to the Williamstown powers-that-be and enjoy the good feelings that come with a sincere (albeit ghost-written) confession!
Of course, I know very well that you said yes to providing us with this wonderful windfall in good part because of what we said in the Ark Encounter feasibility report that we provided you. As I know you will recall, we told you that our attendance numbers would an “estimated average of 1.6 million visitors” in the first year. More than this, we told you that these attendance numbers would simply keep going up. And for July 2022- June 2023, our “scientific” formula projected an attendance of 2,177,737.
Oops!! We have never even made it to one million paid visitors in a year. Here’s a breakdown from this past year (and yes, that busybody Dan Phelps makes it his business to collect and publicize these numbers, instead of allowing us to come up with our own numbers, which I can tell you would look much better!):
July 2022: 110,098
August 2022: 83,638
September 2022: 68,301
October 2022: 74,864
November 2022: 39,125
December 2022: 37,959
January 2023: 14,724
February 2023: 23,020
March 2023: 66,390
April 2023: 70,700
May 2023: 82,585
June 2023: 111,256
TOTAL: 782,660
Yes, yes, yes – I know. This total is only 36% of attendance we told you we would have this year.
So that’s why I am writing. I am so sorry that we “misled” you so badly. Sure, some of this is on you. You should have conducted a closer analysis of the information we gave you. But I don’t want to play the game of blaming the victim (that is, you!) Instead, I want to own the fact that what we told you in our feasibility report was, well, false. Sorry about that!
All this said, I hope you keep in mind that we at AiG are soldiers in the Christian army saving America from the radical Marxists (not exactly sure what this means, but we know that these folks are bad!), from the hordes of LGBTQ militants storming the cultural gates, from the Critical Race Theorists (not exactly sure what this means either, but we know that these folks are bad too!), and from the vaccine-crazy climate cultists.
That is to say, members of the Williamstown City Council, we are on your side (unless, of course, you belong to any of the aforementioned groups or are liberal)! So we are confident that you will forgive us for misleading you. And in turn, we will pray for you and your local economy.
Your brother in Christ –
Ken Ham
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.
One might think that a movement associated with a former state Supreme Court chief justice could draft a petition summary that passes legal muster. But twice already, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has rejected summaries of a petition to put an anti-gerrymandering amendment on Ohio’s November 2024 ballot.
So far, nobody’s explicitly accusing Yost of deliberately slow-walking approval of the anti-gerrymandering amendment, but frustration is growing — and one advocate of redistricting reform pointed out that further delays can become critical quickly.
“The slower this goes, there are increasingly serious consequences,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, which supports the amendment.
Ohio’s legislative and congressional districts are highly gerrymandered. While Donald Trump carried the state by less than eight percentage points in 2020, Republicans control 68% of seats in the state House, 78% in the state Senate and 66% of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Ohio voters apparently didn’t want things to be this way. In 2015 and 2018, redistricting amendments to curb extreme partisan gerrymandering in the legislature and Congress both passed with more than 70% of the vote.
But since the 2020 Census, seven sets of maps passed by the Republican-dominated Redistricting Commission have been rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court. By effectively running out the clock, the districts rejected by the court are still in effect.
Former Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, voted with the court’s three Democrats to reject the GOP-drawn maps, until she was forced to retire because of her age in 2022. Now she’s working with the group Citizens Not Politicians to put another constitutional amendment on the ballot.
She says this one will close loopholes by creating a truly independent redistricting commission made of up of citizens that won’t place a partisan thumb on the scales.
It would ban partisan gerrymanders and create a 15-member commission of Republicans, Democrats and independents to draw the lines. Current and former officeholders, lobbyists and large donors would be banned from sitting on it.
Despite the claims made by GOP leaders during their August attempt to restrict citizen access to the process, voter-initiated amendments to the Ohio Constitution are anything but easy.
First activists have to draft a proposed amendment and a summary of it, gather 1,000 signatures from registered voters and submit them to the attorney general. If the Ohio Attorney General approves the petition summary as accurate, then they have to gather more than 400,000 signatures from registered voters — with a percentage coming from each of 44 of the state’s 88 counties.
And, because many signatures are typically disqualified, proponents try to gather hundreds of thousands more than the minimum. It’s an intensive, costly, time-sensitive process.
So far, Citizens Not Politicians has twice had its petition summaries rejected.
On Aug. 23, Attorney General Yost rejected the first summary, citing nine instances of “omissions and misstatements.”
For example, the summary said that a bipartisan panel appointing commissioners would hire a professional search firm to “assist” it. But the proposed amendment says that the consulting firm would “solicit applications for commissioner, screen and provide information about applicants, check references, and otherwise facilitate the application review and applicant interview process.”
The summary was, well, too summary, Yost ruled.
“The summary thus diminishes the actual role of the search firm in the application process, by merely stating the search firm would ‘assist’ the panel,” the ruling said.
Then after listing specific shortcomings the attorney general found in the first summary, the letter made a statement that made it seem all but certain that a second attempt would fail as well.
“The above instances are just a few examples of the summary’s omissions and misstatements,” it said.
A spokeswoman for Yost didn’t respond when asked why the attorney general didn’t specify the other problems he found with the petition summary. She also didn’t respond to a question asking whether Yost, who is eyeing a run for governor, believes extreme partisan gerrymandering is a problem in the United States.
Citizens Not Politicians quickly gathered another 1,000 signatures and submitted a new summary. On Sept. 14, Yost rejected that as well, but this time he cited only one deficiency.
The summary didn’t explain that the proposed amendment lays out a specific method of determining the party affiliation of redistricting commission members, while the amendment would leave it to the GOP-controlled Ohio Ballot Board to determine the affiliations of members of the panel that would select those commissioners, Yost wrote.
“To be clear, a fair and truthful summary should articulate this distinction so that a signer can understand the Amendment’s true meaning and effect,” Yost’s letter said. “Otherwise, the summary misleads a signer into misbelieving that party affiliation is judged consistently and with the same objective criteria when it is not.”
Citizens Not Politicians submitted a third version of the summary language last Friday and Yost has until Oct. 2 to accept or reject it. The group was less than pleased with the latest ruling.
“We are disappointed and frustrated that the Attorney General has chosen to reject our petition summary for a second time,” its spokesman, Chris Davey, said in a statement. “We adjusted our summary language as the Attorney General requested on the first submission, and we know our summary language was accurate.”
Advocates of the gerrymandering amendment might seem like they have a long time to get their ducks in a row, but time can grow short quickly and delays can be disastrous for them.
It’s not perfectly analogous, but Yost played a role in another delay — one that helped kill an attempt to repeal the corruptly passed House Bill 6. That’s the bribery scheme in which Akron-based FirstEnergy paid more than $60 million and got a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout in return. Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, is now serving a 20-year prison term for his role in the scandal, but somehow, HB 6 remains on the books.
The law was so objectionable that as soon as it passed in 2019, a strong effort at a voter-initiated repeal was announced.
Leaders of the attempted repeal had 90 days after the law’s enrollment to gather at least as many valid signatures as 6% of the number who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election — about 265,000 in 2019. But first, they had to submit a summary of the ballot language along with 1,000 valid signatures for review by the attorney general and the Ballot Board.
Yost rejected the first summary that was submitted and by the time a second was approved — along with another batch of 1,000 signatures — the repeal team had only 54 days left of the original 90 to submit more than a quarter-million valid signatures.
With 40% of the clock expired — and with FirstEnergy spending more than $30 million on a brutal, dishonest campaign to thwart the repeal — time ran out before circulators could gather enough signatures to get it on the ballot.
The timetable for the anti-gerrymandering isn’t nearly that compressed, but each passing week is crucial, Turcer, of Common Cause Ohio, said.
“It could be that this is standard operating procedure,” she said of the two rejections so far. “But it could slow things down so much that they can’t collect signatures during early voting and Election Day.”
She was referring to Nov. 7, when a closely watched abortion rights amendment is expected to draw many Ohioians to the polls. In-person early voting starts Oct. 11 — just 22 days away.
Turcer explained that early voting and Election Day are important for petition circulators because that’s when registered voters — the group eligible to sign petitions — are gathered at county boards of election during early voting and at polling places on Election Day.
Assuming Yost approves the summary language on Oct. 2, it still has to be approved by the Ballot Board and petition forms need to be printed.
“Citizen initiatives are incredibly challenging,” Turcer said. “But they’re much harder if you have a compressed time period.”
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.
Republicans want to cut food, heating, and housing subsidies for poor children and families.This tells me everything I need to know aboutthe Republican Party.
Senator Bob Menendez should be forced to resign from office by his fellow Democratic senators.
It looks like Trump not only inflated his dick size, he also grossly inflated the value of his real estate and business assets.
Some Democrats are calling for candidates to run against Joe Biden. I support this call in the primary. However, come November 2024, the only thing that matters is keeping Trump out of the White House.
Upwards of twenty-three raccoons frequented our backyard this spring and summer. And now that fall has arrived, the raccoons have disappeared, making occasional raids on the food we put out for feral/stray cats.
Chronic illness and pain affects every aspect of my life. Telling me to “put mind over matter” is never the right thing to say. When you say this, I say to myself, “Go fuck yourself.” Continue in your insensitive behavior, I might say this to your face.
“Looks like you are feeling better today,” well-wishers often say. They wrongly judge the quality and level of my suffering by what I do, failing to understand that looks can be deceiving. Just because I’m smiling, doesn’t mean I don’t want to cry. I often smile for others, hiding my pain from them.
Hey, Joe Namath. You had a lifetime 50% pass completion rate, worse than embattled New York Jets quarterback Zach Wilson. STFU. Give the kid the break. Nobody wants to hear from ancient old ex-players. Different era, different game.
Travis Kelce, a Taylor Swift dating, Bud Light drinking promoter of COVID vaccines is upsetting right-wingers with his “woke” behavior. OMG, the meltdowns are fun to watch.
Kevin McCarthy says Biden is to blame for the threatened government shutdown. Sure, Kevin, sure. I bet the hemorrhoid in your arse you affectionately call Matt Gaetz is telling you to say this lest you lose your speakership.
Bonus: I’m increasingly disillusioned with what I see and hear in the larger atheist community. Maybe this is on me. I’ve moved on from the “angry atheist” phase of my life. I’m not that interested anymore in debates about the existence of God.
By Dr. Bruce Gerencser, resident scholar, specializing in snarkiness and smartassery
Evangelical preachers have been preaching about the “rapture” — the sudden, imminent return of Jesus to the atmosphere of Earth to remove all living Christians and transport them to Heaven — my whole life. I am now sixty-six years old. I can’t remember a time when an Evangelical preacher wasn’t predicting that Jesus would soon return to Earth and snatch away born-again believers. Some preachers even give dates for the rapture. Dozens of dates have come and gone without the rapture taking place. Famed Southern Baptist evangelist Bob Harrington was fond of saying, “I am not looking for the undertaker, I’m looking for the uppertaker.” Harrington died in 2017. He may have not been looking for the undertaker, but the undertaker was looking for him. Jesus was nowhere to be found.
Hal Lindsay, Jack Van Impe, Harold Camping, Edgar Whisenant, and countless other preachers have set a date for the rapture. None of their predictions has come true What are we to make of their failed predictions? Does this mean that these men are false prophets? Should we stone them to death?
As a lifelong follower of rapture pronouncements, I have come up with a new explanation for why the rapture never happens — all straight from the Bible.
First, the earth is flat.
Second, an ice wall surrounds the earth.
Third, there is an atmospheric dome that covers the earth.
Fourth, when Jesus returns to earth, the angel Gabriel will play his trumpet, announcing the rapture is nigh.
Fifth, as believers are pulled naked out of their clothes as they rise to the heavens, all of a sudden they slam into the dome and fall back to earth! Physics, Jesus.
What’s strange is that there are no past news reports of millions of naked Christians exposing themselves in public. Weird, right? I suspect that Jesus — in Men in Black fashion — wipes from the minds of humanity any thoughts of recent events. Evidence? Think of how many times Evangelical preachers have predicted the rapture — without success. Believers never seem to remember past failed predictions. Remember all those preachers who predicted Donald Trump would win the 2020 presidential election? Nary a word about their false prophecies. Instead, they have moved on to predicting Trump will win in 2024 and take America back for God. So it is for these rapture preachers. They want you to forget past predictions, and focus, instead, on their latest pronouncement. “Jesus’ return is imminent! He could return today!” they say. “And while you are waiting for Jesus to show up, please send a donation to my ministry.”
I predict that Jesus will not rapture away the church. Until Elon Musk sends a spaceship to the upper atmosphere and cuts a hole so believers can escape when the trumpet sounds, Evangelicals will just have to wait patiently to be raptured.
What I have written here is every bit as true as a dead Jewish man miraculously coming back to life, ascending to Heaven, never to be seen or heard from again, only to one day have an angel blow a trumpet announcing his return to Earth so he can rapture away millions of Christians.
Prove me wrong! 🙂
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.
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.
In the 1960s, my dad would drop my siblings and me off at the Bryan Theater so we could watch the 25-cent Saturday afternoon matinee. But somewhere in my primary school years, going to movies became unacceptable. I suspect that this was due to the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preaching my parents were hearing and absorbing at the time. From that point forward, outside of attending a drive-in movie one time at age 18 and taking two different girls on movie dates (Jaws and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), I didn’t go to a movie theater again until I was in my late 30s. As a Christian, I believed that going to or renting movies was supporting Hollywood, an institution that I considered a den of iniquity.
In the late 1990s, having become more “liberal” in my thinking, I decided it was time for the Gerencser family to go to a movie. When I told Polly that we were all going to the drive-in to see a movie, she was appalled. She literally thought that God was going to strike us dead. Well, here we are, all these years later, still among the living. Evidently, God didn’t seem to give a shit about us going to the drive-in. By the way, the first hardcore, violent, nudity-laden movie we saw? George of the Jungle! The Second? Air Bud.
I grew up in a home that always had a television. My Mom told me one time that American Bandstand was my babysitter. The first memory I have about television is watching the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. I remember my dad coming home with what I later in life called the “poor man’s color TV.” It was a colored, plastic sheet that Dad taped to the TV screen. The top of the sheet was blue and the bottom was green. Supposedly, the screen was meant to simulate sky and grass. Dad wasn’t impressed, and we quickly went back to watching black-and-white TV. The Gerencser family didn’t own a color television until sometime in the 1970s.
My wife and I married in 1978. One of our first purchases was a used tube console color TV that we bought from Marv Hartman TV in Bryan, Ohio. We paid $125. We continued to watch TV for a few years, until one day I decided, under the leadership and conviction of the Holy Spirit, that watching TV was a sin. This was in the mid-1980s. After swearing off watching TV, I decided that no one, if he or she were a good Christian anyway, should be watching television. One Sunday, as pastor of Somerset Baptist Church in Mt Perry, Ohio, I preached a 90-minute sermon — you read that right, 90 minutes — on the evils of watching television and going to the movies. I called on all True Christians® to immediately get rid of their TVs and follow their preacher into the pure Christian air of a Hollywood-free world.
To prove my point, I gathered the congregation out in front of the church for a physical demonstration of my commitment to following the TV-hating Jesus. I put our 13-inch black and white TV in the churchyard and hit it several times with a sledgehammer, breaking the TV into a pile of electronic rubble. Like the record burnings of the 1970s, my act was meant to show that I was willing to do whatever it took to be an on-fire, sold-out follower of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Just before I hit the TV with the sledgehammer, a church member by the name of Gary said to me, Hey preacher, if you don’t want that TV I’ll take it. How dare he ruin my sin-hating demonstration! I thought at the time. I gave Gary a scowling look and proceeded to knock the Devil right out of the TV. I am happy to report that not one church member followed in my TV-hating footsteps. What church members did was make sure that their televisions were OFF or covered with a towel when the man of God made an appearance at their home. That’s just how the game was and is played.
In the early 1990s, I would, from time to time, rent a television from a local rent-to-own business. Two times come to mind: the 1990 World Series and the 1991 Gulf War. Outside of that, our oldest three children grew up in a television-free home. They were teenagers: 18,16, and 13, before they watched TV (except for watching Saturday cartoons when they were little). Well, this isn’t entirely true. When they visited their grandparents, they were permitted to watch TV — even though I wasn’t happy about them doing so. Like Amish children, they were mesmerized by Disney movies and cartoons.
After our family attended their first movie, I decided I would buy a television, setting in motion seven years of what any competent psychologist would call bizarre, mentally imbalanced behavior. While what I am about to share will sound hilarious to those who never spent any time in Christian Fundamentalism, at the time; there was nothing humorous about my actions.
From 1998 through 2005, I purchased and got rid of at least six television sets. I gave one TV to the local crisis pregnancy center. I also gave one set to my son. The rest I sold at a loss. Why all the televisions? you might ask. Simple. After watching TV for a time, like a moth to a flame, I was drawn towards watching shows that I promised God I would never watch. Dear Lord, I promise I will only watch G- or PG-rated programming, and if there is any nudity, cursing, or gore I will immediately turn off the TV. No matter how much I wanted to be holy and righteous, I found that I loved watching programs that contained things that I considered sin.
My “sinning’ would go on for a few weeks or months until the guilt would become so great that I would say to God, you are right, Lord. This is sin. I will get rid of the TV and I promise to never, ever watch it again. Out the TV would go, but months later I would get the hankering to watch TV again and I would, unbeknownst to Polly, go buy a television.
I so wanted to be right with God and live a life untainted by the world, yet I loved to watch TV. One time, after I came to the decision to get rid of yet another TV, Polly arrived home from work and found me sitting on the steps of the porch, crying and despondent. I hated myself. I hated that I was so easily led astray by Satan. I hated that I was such a bad testimony. Look at ALL that Jesus did for me! Couldn’t I, at the very least, go without watching TV for the sake of the kingdom of God? Evidently not.
I have written before about my perfectionist tendencies. I wanted to be the perfect Christian. God’s Word said to abstain from the very appearance of evil. Psalm 101:3 was a driving force in my life:
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
Television was a wicked thing, I told myself, yet I continued to battle with my desire to watch sports and other programs on TV. Needless to say, the advent of the Internet brought into our home a new way for me to be tempted to sin against the thrice-holy God I pledged to serve, even unto death. I’m sure that my children will remember me putting a sign above our computer that quoted Psalm 101:3. This was meant as a reminder that we should NEVER view inappropriate, sinful things on the Internet. Needless to say, I know exactly how long it takes to look at a pornographic photo while on a dial-up connection. Way too long, by the way. 🙂
My three oldest children, now in their late 30s and 40s, continue to rib me about my TV-crazed days. One of them will periodically ask if I am ready to get rid of our flat-screen TV. Their good-natured ribbing hails back to the day when their dad acted like a psycho, buying and selling televisions. At the time, I am sure they thought I was crazy, and I wouldn’t blame them if they did.
Where was my partner, Polly in all of this, you ask? She was the dutiful, submissive wife who believed her God-called, on-fire, sold-out Christian pastor of a husband knew best. Polly rarely watched TV, so having one didn’t matter to her. I was the one who “needed” to watch TV. As I now psychoanalyze this period of my life, I think watching TV was my way of being “normal.” Serving a sin-hating God and preaching to others a rigid, inflexible morality meant that I had to live a Christ-honoring, sin-free life. Again, in light of the atoning work of Jesus on my behalf, I thought that forsaking the pleasure of the “world” was but a small price to pay for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Yet, I wanted to be like everyone else, so I would come home after a long day of studying for my sermons, visiting church members, and doing the work of the ministry, and leave God sitting on the front porch. Watching TV was my way of unwinding after working days which were often long and demanding. While I still was selective about what I watched, my attempts to avoid “sinful” viewing rarely kept me from watching whatever I wanted to watch, especially after the children went to bed. Over time, my guilt levels would increase, ultimately leading to the behaviors outlined in this post.
In 2006, two years before I deconverted, I finally put an end to my battle with the television. I decided, God be damned, I was going to own a TV and watch whatever I wanted to watch. From that point forward, we have owned a television. While I have continued to buy televisions, my purchases are driven by resolution, refresh rate, and screen size, and not the thought that God was going to strike me dead for seeing a naked man or woman on TV.
Several years ago, as we were watching an episode of True Blood, I turned to Polly and said, who would have thought that we would be sitting here watching bloody, naked vampires having sex? We laughed together, both grateful that the preacher had finally been delivered from the demon of TV.
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.
