Five Public Opinions

The week in fundie . . .

1. Religion as child abuse: members of a religious cult known as the Grail Movement kept a seven-year-old boy “chained in a closet as relatives hacked off pieces of his flesh to eat.” The Grail Movement makes the Manson family sound like the Hanson family: in 2000, its spiritual leader Jiří Adam “had his followers sign all their property over to him and forced the women into hard labor on at least two of his properties.” Detectives compared the victims to Auschwitz inmates. (Via Pharyngula)
2. Anti-gay activist and quack Paul Cameron is in Russia to support the local authorities’ crackdown on gay rights marches, and welcomes the embrace of his ideas by the sociology department at Moscow State University, a school which has
   

   distributed a brochure to all students that approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars, and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system.

   (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion)

3. The Bilerico Project reports on a gay rights supporter who collapsed at a demonstration outside San Francisco’s City Hall–to the cheers of a group of loving Christian anti-gay protestors, one of whom was chanting “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear?” (Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars) Read the rest of this entry »