I’m so sorry that happened to you.

I really tend to hate the parents’ rights crowds. Children deserve rights and knowledge and community.

I read most of that (think I missed the last few chapters, but he was out of Elan and had done some traveling)–it was horrifying. There’s also a 3 episode documentary on Netflix called “The Program” where the documentary maker revisits the now closed school where she went (The Academy at Ivy Ridge) and by episode 3, she’s followed the money to one family behind a lot of these institutions. But as she and former AaIR students actually see other facilities far from where they were locked up, they’re all carbon copies of each other, they’re all just the same punish-for-everything camps with no escape. Fucked up that there’s like a formal recipe for how to do this to families and not get caught. And that there are so few legal protections for children.

Maybe that’s what pope Franky was talking about when he said surrogacy was a threat to human dignity.

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What people identifying as Christian do and act doesn’t represent Christianity as a whole.

I mean, religions are what people define them as, use them as. If two million people use the Christian Bible to prop up child abuse, slavery, and sexual, then that is part of the tradition of that faith. Perhaps you didn’t ascribe to faith that seeks to sever people from God via thoughtcrimes. Perhaps the church you attend works to alleviate those injustices, and that seeks conservation of the planet we were gifted. But I know when I asked about racism at church, when I asked about what we as a congregation were doing about it, I was told that was a heart issue that we just had to pray people would resolve on their own. Women, again, could not hold positions of authority because that was against God’s will, gay people were sent away, but racists, what can you do? Again, my experience isn’t unique. There was never any talk of care taking the planet. Fair bit of talk about the dude who buried his Talent vs the one who invested it, though.

I think you identify a lot of real evils in this world, and people really do create a lot of problems. I fundamentally don’t believe we are overwhelmingly evil, and I think teaching people they are evil is more likely to create people who grow up to be evil. People live up to what those around them believe them to be. When people believe to their core that they are truly evil and cannot trust themselves, that they instead must trust the human layers between themselves and God., that’s gonna come up as trauma and/or abuse somewhere down the line.

And while any environment can become abusive, churches preach truth and morality; tied in with that is a strong sense of community and family. Trying to call out abuse from an elder or a pastor often results in the pastor getting moved and ‘prayed for’ and the victim pressured to forgive before is appropriate. They’re bullied to say they forgive when they are not actually ok. And the abuser gets to move on and find new victims. We’ve all seen the scandals about the Catholic Church over the last couple decades. The Southern Baptist Convention had a list of 700 abusers they covered for. But still don’t be a loud lady, that’s against God. The SBC is one of the biggest evangelical denominations in the United States. I don’t think they’re what Christianity is supposed to be. But they are Christians and this is how they express their faith, so this is how I understand Christianity.

Bad theology hurts people. And to pretend there isn’t bad is to be unable to fix.

I do think that there are a lot of good branches of Christianity out there, where the main focus is on loving thy neighbor and opening the way to God to all people, not being exclusionary.

My experience of religion, like so many others though, hinged (more and more strongly over the years) on a literal interpretation of Genesis. One in which eating a bad piece of fruit causes inseparable rifts between parent and child; one in which the creator of all, the knower of all, created rules that unless I grovel and beg and pledge constant devotion, I deserved eternal conscious torment for existing. That’s an abusive belief. Especially to teach children.

That’s before the curse of Eve, for eating the bad fruit first, causing the pain of childbirth, hereditarily (the biggest cause of death in women throughout history), as well as god-sanctioned subjugation of women. (For example, a woman doing everything right knows not to try to teach a high school group–those are men that she’s not qualified to minister to. She knows it’s better not to vote in church matters, even if she’s allowed, because the head of household, her husband does that). This creates social structures that disempower women as a point of culture, another abusive trait.

Children also deserve subjection. They are to be obedient at all times, it’s literally one of the commandments. Our denomination taught that “Obey thy father and thy mother” also applied to all earthly authority over us. Authority and structure mattered more as a culture than understanding and insight.

And the social culture of church can feel toxic or stifling. Often outright sinning, even as a repetitive behavior is tolerated in church spaces (especially in cases of child or domestic abuse), but someone who has reason to think a little differently (like believing in Jesus without believing in Genesis, being queer, being progressive) is shunned or made to be quiet. They know from a young age that their voices can never be respected in those spaces, the number of sermons I heard about how evil/misguided/ other awful stereotype that non believers were supposed to be… It teaches othering, it teaches people to reduce other people to stereotypes of what the pastor says instead of what the person’s lived experience is.

This isn’t unusual for Christianity, especially in the States. My experience with abuse patterns in Christianity may truly not apply to you. But I think they apply to many.

And I’m not even going to touch on the abuse that happens to homeschooled children, often strongly correlated with religion.

Friendly reminder to everyone that the rest of the world has signed on the United Nation’s Connvention on the Rights of the Child; the US doesn’t like that it could prevent children from being spanked, because God wants us to spank our children (spare the rod, spoil the child).

Religion is often a basis for the suffering of children.

Probably something like this

For people who love Bad news 🎶

Sorry, kinda had that feel

Seconding Magnatiles

Also, marble runs!

Mental health is a squishier standard. Let’s say I had depression and decided to talk to someone about it, get the help I needed to become mentally healthy again. Should that necessarily be penalized if I want to go buy a gun to go out to the range or hunting with my buddies? Should seeking help disqualify someone entirely? Does that prevent people from getting help they think they might need, stigmatizing an already stigmatized practice?

Meanwhile, if Dave down the hill has a record, he’s already shown he was willing to do an illegal thing, whether or not the record is fair. If he already has reports against him for domestic disturbances, that’s pretty cut and dry violent behavior that ought not be allowed to intensify.

I’m not saying mental checks aren’t a good idea or aren’t worth it. I’m saying that they’re a harder sell because a) they take more nuance to formulate well and b) the propaganda machine will have an easier time telling people how those checks are overreach.

If a person killed 8 babies, by definition, they have killed 7, and thus fit the “worst” standard that OP specified.

Your comment led me towards an amusing thought: in the Harry Potter universe, goblins sell things to wizards for the duration of the wizard’s life, but then they expect it to go back to the goblins because ownership works differently for them vs wizards. Wizards don’t always/usually understand or respect that. So… If I ever was in the position to open a brothel, perhaps I’d name it “The Goblin’s Den.” I… Don’t know what kind of clientele that would attract though.

Ah yes, the world wide webiverse. The net. Dialed in. Where you’ve got mail!

Haha, yeah, I don’t agree, but I also really like Dave Rintoul as Darcy… From the old adaptation. So there’s my unpopular opinion. Matthew McFayden will always primarily be the stressed son from “Death at a Funeral” for me.

Friend, the question proposed $500 Million to play with, not $500 thousand. You have a lot more budget to play with.

Cork let go. Cork was… Free.

And then came an explosion of sound.