This is what helped get Trump elected.

Courtesy of NPR: 

A majority of whites say discrimination against them exists in America today, according to a poll released Tuesday from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

"If you apply for a job, they seem to give the blacks the first crack at it," said 68-year-old Tim Hershman of Akron, Ohio, "and, basically, you know, if you want any help from the government, if you're white, you don't get it. If you're black, you get it." 

More than half of whites — 55 percent — surveyed say that, generally speaking, they believe there is discrimination against white people in America today. Hershman's view is similar to what was heard on the campaign trail at Trump rally after Trump rally. Donald Trump catered to white grievance during the 2016 presidential campaign and has done so as president as well. 

Notable, however, is that while a majority of whites in the poll say discrimination against them exists, a much smaller percentage say that they have actually experienced it. Also important to note is that 84 percent of whites believe discrimination exists against racial and ethnic minorities in America today.

Yes poor white people.

They have the majority of the money, still firmly hold the reins of power in his country, and are over represented in Washington.

And yet THEY are the ones being discriminated against. 

Talk about snowflakes.

And all Donald Trump had to do was agree with them that THEY are the oppressed people in this country, and promise to ensure that they would never have to surrender control of the country to the other so long as he was in the White House and they voted for him overwhelmingly.

So easily manipulated.

So easily controlled.

Almost enough to make me despise my own race.

A long and sordid history indeed.

Former child actor Kirk Cameron's marriage advice is essentially everything works out fine as long as women know their place.

Courtesy of Christian Post:

"A lot of people don't know that marriage comes with instructions," Cameron explained. "And, we find them right there in God's word." 

Cameron stated that husband's are "to love their wives and not to tell their wives that they need to submit to them," but added that wives should not only respect their husbands but also follow their lead. 

"Wives are to honor and respect and follow their husband's lead, not to tell their husband how he ought to be a better husband," Cameron explained. "When each person gets their part right, regardless of how their spouse is treating them, there is hope for real change in their marriage."

So to be clear the husbands should tell their wives to submit, the wives should just know to do that in order to keep the marriage together. 

You know I'm twice divorced so I am the last guy to give marital advice, but it seems to me that if your relationship only survives because one of you is expected to shut up and do as they're told, then what you have is not really a relationship. Well certainly not a healthy one.

On a related note we could all still be enjoying the existence of slavery if those uppity Negroes had only accepted the fact that the white folks were in charge.

Ted Cruz and Judeo Christian values.

And you know that Ted Cruz is just the kind of Christian to not only defend these practices, but even suggest bringing some of them back.

Found this on Reddit.

Yeah you can't escape it in this country.

And when you speak out you are accused of disrespecting their religious freedom, or of trying to oppress them.

That's okay, things are changing. And we are patient. 

President Obama speaks out against anti-gay policies in Kenya.

Courtesy of the Obama Diary.

Courtesy of CNN:  

President Barack Obama on Saturday lectured Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta about his country's gay rights record. 

"When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they are doing to anybody, but because they are different, that's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode," Obama said at a joint press conference with the Kenyan leader in Nairobi. "And bad things happen." 

Under Kenyan law, sexual activity between men is illegal and punishable with a maximum imprisonment of 14 years. Many Kenyan leaders had encouraged Obama not to discuss gay rights on his first trip to the country as President. 

But Obama equated legalized discrimination of gays to legalized racism in America. 

"And when a government gets in a habit of people treating people differently, those habits can spread," Obama continued. "As an African-American, I am painfully aware of what happens when people are treated differently under the law."

The president of Kenya did not exactly welcome these remarks, saying in effect  "It is very difficult for us to be able to impose on people that which they themselves do not accept."

However the fact is that President Obama undoubtedly feels a great deal of responsibility for the anti-LGBT sentiment in the continent since much of it is due to American evangelicals coming over and spreading their hatred among the people of Africa.

The President also visited with some of his family members while in Kenya which will quite likely start a whole new round of "Obama was born in Africa" conspiracy talk among conservatives.

By the way here is President Obama doing a little dancing in Nairobi.

And for those who doubted President @barackobama 's step - the #LipalaDance #SuraYangu is his new favorite Kenyan dance! Thanks @ukenyatta and First Lady Kenyatta for joining in the dance! Our performance at State House is Everything!!! @fancy_fingers @iamchimano @fancy_fingers @bienaimesol #ObamainKenya #ObamaReturns Tag the world!!!

A video posted by BEST GROUP NOMINEE 2015 MAMAs (@sautisol) on Jul 25, 2015 at 12:00pm PDT

Damn I am going to miss this man!

Courageous high school girl blows the lid off of the Jehovah's Witnesses in speech delivered in front of her classmates.

Courtesy of the Independent:  

A schoolgirl who left the Jehovah’s Witnesses after learning of its alleged failure to protect vulnerable women has blasted the organisation in a powerful speech to her classmates. 

Holding back tears, she recalled her personal experiences as a member of the church and how she was taught everyone outside the religion, including her father, would be sent to Armageddon. 

She also highlighted women’s lowly position in the hierarchy of the organisation and how they are viewed as inferior to men. 

“They cannot teach men. They cannot even speak at a podium in front of men as I am doing now,” she said. “They are not to question any decision made by a men. That is slander.”

The girl goes on to share the stories of three women she knew who were members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and each is more horrifying than the previous.

I know this video is hard to watch, several times the young lady becomes so choked up she can barely speak, but I urge you to watch until the end. Her message at the end is especially poignant.

Besides if she was brave enough to share her story, we should at least be courageous enough to listen.

Perfectly protesting intolerance.

I'm not a believer in heaven or hell, but I can say unequivocally that wherever those two wind up will be a great deal more fun than wherever that guy ends up.

Exactly.

Misogynistic quotes from Christian leaders throughout the ages.

Courtesy of Salon:

In pain shall you bring forth children, woman, and you shall turn to your husband and he shall rule over you. And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your way around him whom the devil had not the force to attack. With what ease you shattered that image of God: Man! Because of the death you merited, even the Son of God had to die… Woman, you are the gate to hell. —Tertullian, the “father of Latin Christianity” (c160-225) 

Woman is a temple built over a sewer. —Tertullian 

The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes. —Martin Luther, Reformer (1483-1546) 

Even as the church must fear Christ Jesus, so must the wives also fear their husbands. And this inward fear must be shewed by an outward meekness and lowliness in her speeches and carriage to her husband….For if there be not fear and reverence in the inferior, there can be no sound nor constant honor yielded to the superior. —John Dod, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements, Puritan guidebook first published in 1603 

The second duty of the wife is constant obedience and subjection. —John Dod 

The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. —Pat Robertson, Southern Baptist leader (1930–) 

The Holiness of God is not evidenced in women when they are brash, brassy, boisterous, brazen, head-strong, strong-willed, loud-mouthed, overly-talkative, having to have the last word, challenging, controlling, manipulative, critical, conceited, arrogant, aggressive, assertive, strident, interruptive, undisciplined, insubordinate, disruptive, dominating, domineering, or clamoring for power. Rather, women accept God’s holy order and character by being humbly and unobtrusively respectful and receptive in functional subordination to God, church leadership, and husbands. —James Fowler, Women in the Church, 1999. 

Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture. —Mark Driscoll, founder of Mars Hill nondenominational mega-church franchise. (1970-)

Salon lists twenty of these quotes in all, each one incredibly insulting and degrading towards women.

The Christian religion was never created to support women. It was created to subjugate them, render them mute, and to bend them to the will of man, using the ultimate male figure to frighten them into subservience. 

Which of course brings up the question which vexes me still. I understand why women of years past might have simply accepted their circumstances, since they had not way out of them at the time, but with all  that we know today, and the voice that women have found for themselves, why do so many continue to self identify as Christians?

Remember, it's not about protecting babies, it's about controlling women's sexuality.

Courtesy of Slate: 

During arguments for the recent Supreme Court case McCullen v. Coakley, which eventually led to the court striking down Massachusetts' buffer zone protecting abortion clinics from protesters crowding the door, it was revealed that many abortion clinic protesters think of themselves less as protesters and more as "sidewalk counselors." Jill Filipovic of Cosmopolitan decided to go to Massachusetts Planned Parenthood clinics to find out, exactly, what these protesters want to counsel women about. The answer turns out to be a little more complex than "don't get an abortion." 

"Men and women are made different," Father Andrew Beauregard explains on camera while protesting at a clinic, "in that women, as the church teaches, reach their full potential in motherhood." There's a tight if inhumane logic to this thinking: Women exist to give birth. Thus, if a woman is choosing not to give birth, she is not working as she is supposed to. Which means she must be broken and needs fixing. Ergo, "counseling." 

As Filipovic found, none of the self-described counselors she spoke to actually "had any educational background or credentials in psychology, therapy, counseling, or mental health," but they do sincerely believe that something is deeply wrong with women who want to exert control over their own fertility or who want to have sex on their own terms. And they felt absolutely free to share that point of view with Filipovic.

Did you hear that one lady?

"If women want careers and education and everything and they don't want children what are they doing having sex?"

Why does nobody ask men that same question?

But then I forgot that it was a woman those convinced Adam to eat that apple. Which is why God punished her,and all that followed, with a painful childbirth, and demanded that from that day forward females must subjugate themselves to the will of their husbands.

This is why the abortion debate cannot be ignored, and why people must understand that these people will not stop with outlawing abortion in this country. They want nothing less than to turn women into breeding stock and put them back under the control of men.

And towards that end they have no lack of useful idiots to help them achieve that goal.

How many cultures came to know and understand Christianity.

Those comfortably ensconced in the protective shell of Christianity see the religion as spreading salvation and hope to primitive indigenous people around the world.

But for those who are subjected to the most aggressive religious campaign in human history, the view is quite different.

The underlying subtext of Christianity is crystal clear. Join us, or perish. 

Why yes, yes it does.

And surprisingly enough not only do many religious women accept their status as subservient to men, they actually drag their daughters to church so that they can be indoctrinated as well.

You know it is almost as if the entire religion was formed simply to oppress women and give men an unhealthy feeling of superiority over them. 

World War C.

Courtesy of Slate:

 If you’ve followed the story of Uganda’s infamous “Kill the Gays” law over the past few years, you’re probably aware that prominent American evangelicals like Scott Lively and Lou Engle have been harshly criticized for their role in introducing a strain of zealous social conservatism—including an especially vicious condemnation of homosexuality—to Africa. But media reports of this phenomenon have been mere hints compared to the dense epidemiological survey that God Loves Uganda represents. Williams’ vision of the relationship between American missionary groups—like the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer that he profiles here—and the Ugandan government and culture is one of contagion, infection. Early in the film, an animated map of the globe shows salvation spreading like a plague across the world. A little later, a young woman on her first mission trip to the country describes her goal as one of virality: 

"One of my greatest hopes is to deposit what I’ve kind of received at IHOP, that DNA of prayer and worship. DNA replicates itself, and so I think that everybody wants to replicate their values and the core parts of who they are." 

And as Williams shows, the evangelical movement’s vector-teams have been successful—images of spirit-struck white people wailing and “rapid-fire” praying for Africa in Missouri transform into scenes of wild-eyed Ugandan ministers screaming at strangers in a traffic jam, of white-walled rooms full of people jumping and flailing and lifting chairs in the air, of sweat-drenched Africans speaking in tongues. Williams has created a zombie movie, only the dreaded mutation is one of hateful Christian ideology rather than cells: Call it “World War C.” 

Tracing the origins of this epidemic prove upsettingly simple. “The West has been in a decline,” Lou Engle, founder of prayer rally program “The Call,” explains in the gruff, breathy, slightly crazed tone that a certain kind of minister uses to convey his fervor. “But right now I think that Africa, it’s the firepot of spiritual renewal and revival. It’s very exciting to me.” America is becoming increasingly resistant to his bigoted version of Christianity; time to find greener pastures elsewhere. And as another missionary explains, Uganda is the perfect place: “50 percent of the population is under 15 years old. … What [we] can do is limited, but we can multiply ourselves in these young people.” Add that to the strategy of tying aid and charity work to values exportation in order to ensure a captive audience, and it’s easy to see why many Ugandans so readily accept the evangelical message.

I discovered the sordid side of evangelism and missionary work right here in Alaska, after finding out how the early Christian workers separated families, punished children for speaking their native languages, and renamed them with Biblical names while insisting that they forget their birth names.

What I learned up here was more than enough to put me off religion for the rest of my life, but when you research the spread of Christianity throughout the world, the brutality, oppression, and destruction of ancient customs and beliefs is enough to make a truly moral person sick to their stomach.

World War C, is the perfect description of the plague that has swept this planet and which continues to tear apart communities, turn family members against each other, and inspire hatred toward homosexuals and those unwilling to leave the religion of their ancestors.

If you have not yet seen the film, worry not, you can see it right here.

Turning foreign exchange students into slave labor by threatening to have them deported. Just things Christian Bible School presidents do.

Courtesy of The State:

Reginald Wayne Miller, the president and founder of Cathedral Bible College, is not allowed to set foot on the college campus in Marion or communicate with any of the school's current or former foreign students as an investigation continues into allegations that Miller threatened to cancel foreign students' visas if they did not work long hours for little pay. 

Those terms are part of a $250,000 secured bond that Magistrate Judge Thomas Rogers set for Miller during a detention hearing Friday in federal court. In addition, Miller will be on home detention and will be required to wear an electronic monitoring device. 

"I don't think we've identified all of the potential victims yet," said Carrie Fisher, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case. Fisher said some victims may have already left the country and some may be former students who have yet to come forward. "Our investigation just started this week." 

Miller, who wore shackles and orange prison garb at the hearing, did not speak except to tell Rogers that he understood and agreed to the bond requirements. His public defender, William Nettles, said Miller's friends and family will attempt to raise the money needed for bond. Miller also turned over his passport to court officials. He was still booked into the Florence County Detention Center as of Friday afternoon. 

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations filed a criminal complaint against Miller this week saying they have probable cause to charge him with forced labor, a felony that carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years for each count. Investigators say Miller forced foreign students to work at the campus and his personal residence for as little as $25 per week. Miller threatened to cancel the students' visas if they complained or didn't comply with his demands, according to an affidavit filed this week. 

You know what continues to piss me off, is that people insist on believing that being an Atheist automatically makes you an immoral person, when there is so much evidence to suggest that it is Christians who seem to lack any sense of morality.

Of course if I were to suggest such a thing I would be completely unjustified in doing so, but that never stops those on the other side now does it?

And just how many young people sat it this man's feet while the preached to them about love, morality, and sin? Perhaps instead what they really learned was oppression, hypocrisy, and greed.

Guess who's now considered a terrorist in Saudi Arabia. That's right, me.

Courtesy of Human Rights Watch:  

Saudi Arabia’s new terrorism law and a series of related royal decrees create a legal framework that appears to criminalize virtually all dissident thought or expression as terrorism. The sweeping provisions in the measures, all issued since January 2014, threaten to close down altogether Saudi Arabia’s already extremely restricted space for free expression. 

“Saudi authorities have never tolerated criticism of their policies, but these recent laws and regulations turn almost any critical expression or independent association into crimes of terrorism,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “These regulations dash any hope that King Abdullah intends to open a space for peaceful dissent or independent groups.”

And just how sweeping are these provisions?

This sweeping:

Article 1: “Calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”

That's right. Simply believing that there is no God, and mentioning that, is now considered an offense and is dealt with in the same way as a guy who opens fire on a busload of school children.

And we buy our oil from these people!

Should I even mention that there are religious fundamentalists in this country who would gladly impose similar laws if they thought there was a chance they might be able to get it?

Because there are.

Sure Christians and Muslims THINK they are a persecuted group, but we Atheists know who are the real victims of discrimination.

Franklin Graham praises Vladimir Putin for "protecting children from any gay agenda or propaganda."

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Evangelist Franklin Graham is praising Russian President Vladimir Putin for his aggressive crackdown on homosexuality, saying his record on protecting children from gay “propaganda” is better than President Obama’s “shameful” embrace of gay rights. 

Graham, who now heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association started by his famous father, praises Putin in the March issue of the group’s Decision magazine for signing a bill that imposes fines for adults who promote “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.” 

The Russian law came under heavy criticism from gay rights activists, and from Obama, ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. In response, Obama included openly gay athletes as part of the official U.S. delegation to Sochi. 

“In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues,” Graham writes. “Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.” 

“Our president and his attorney general have turned their backs on God and His standards, and many in the Congress are following the administration’s lead. This is shameful.” 

With the caveat that “I am not endorsing President Putin,” Graham nonetheless praised Russia’s get-tough approach toward gay rights. 

“Isn’t it sad, though, that America’s own morality has fallen so far that on this issue — protecting children from any homosexual agenda or propaganda — Russia’s standard is higher than our own?”

Homophobic, traitorous, POS!

And of course this "gay agenda" that he so reviles is simply to be treated like everybody else, and to be allowed to marry who they love.

The idea that his piece of garbage would extoll the virtues of a man who has his political enemies murdered, oppresses any who dare speak out against him, and is right now invading a sovereign nation, over a man who has ended two unnecessary wars, saved the economy from ruin, and worked to provide better access to health care for all American citizens, is indefensible.

No wonder he and Sarah Palin get along so well.

Just a few quotes concerning the opinion of "good", and even saintly, Christian men about the role of women.

All quotes courtesy of Atheism and Me:  

What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman… I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children. — Saint Augustine 

Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way. They should, in fact, be segregated as they are the cause of hideous and involuntary erections in holy men. — Saint Augustine 

Woman was merely man’s helpmate, a function which pertains to her alone. She is not the image of God but as far as man is concerned, he is by himself the image of God. — Saint Augustine 

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power. — Saint Thomas Aquinas 

Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one’s guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. … Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good. — St. Albertus Magnus 

Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman. —Clement of Alexandria,Church father, venerated as a Saint until the 17th century 

If [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth—that is why they are there. — Martin Luther 

Woman was made for only one reason, to serve and obey man. — John Knox 

Wife: Be content to be insignificant. What loss would it be to God or man had you never been born. — John Wesley 

A wife should submit herself to the leadership of her husband. Leadership in the church should always be male. — Southern Baptist Convention (2000)

As I have said numerous times in the past, there are few things that confuse me more than the fact that so many women still have faith in a religion that has demonstrated nothing but disdain for them since its very inception. 

Uganda makes it official, being gay is now against the law with a lifetime prison sentence and everything.

Courtesy of The Washington Post:  

With the stroke of his pen, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda defied science and world opinion to make lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people outlaws in his country. 

“Homosexuals are actually mercenaries,” he said. “They are heterosexual people, but because of money they say they are homosexuals. These are prostitutes because of money.” Museveni added, “There’s now an attempt at social imperialism, to impose social values. We’re sorry to see that you (the West) live the way you live, but we keep quiet about it.” The “anti-homosexuality” law carries a penalty of 14 years for a first-time offense and life imprisonment for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.” 

The world isn’t keeping quiet about the latest travesty against LGBT people in Africa. Denmark and Norway announced they were delaying or diverting aid. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States was reviewing its relationship with the central African country, including $400 million in aid. 

“This is a tragic day for Uganda and for all who care about the cause of human rights,” Kerry said in a statement. Museveni’s signature on the law and the motivation behind it show he doesn’t care at all.

Being thrown into prison for daring to love. 

It does not get much more oppressive than that.

By the way if you are unaware as to the source of this hatred, then look no further.

Conservative religious groups and Republican lawmakers have launched a concerted effort to allow discrimination based on prejudices born of faith.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

Kansas set off a national firestorm last week when the GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would have allowed anyone to refuse to do business with same-sex couples by citing religious beliefs. The bill, which covered both private businesses and individuals, including government employees, would have barred same-sex couples from suing anyone who denies them food service, hotel rooms, social services, adoption rights, or employment—as long as the person denying the service said he or she had a religious objection to homosexuality. As of this week, the legislation was dead in the Senate. But the Kansas bill is not a one-off effort. 

Republicans lawmakers and a network of conservative religious groups has been pushing similar bills in other states, essentially forging a national campaign that, critics say, would legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Republicans in Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee recently introduced provisions that mimic the Kansas legislation. And Arizona, Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have introduced broader "religious freedom" bills with a unique provision that would also allow people to deny services or employment to LGBT Americans, legal experts say. 

"This is a concerted campaign that the religious Right has been hinting at for a couple of years now," says Evan Hurst, associate director of Truth Wins Out, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes gay rights. "The fact that they're doing it Jim Crow-style is remarkable, considering the fact that one would think the GOP would like to be electable among people under 50 sometime in the near future."

The article goes on to give examples from Idaho, to South Dakota, to Tennessee of states that have introduced bills that would allow businesses to refuse service to anybody whose lifestyle insulted their religious beliefs. 

Which by the way was one of the arguments used during the Jim Crow era to refuse service to blacks and to prevent interracial marriages.

So let me address the elephant in the room.

I get quite a lot of negative feedback for my promotion of secular ideals and my attacks on religion. And I understand why it might upset certain people.

However what everybody has to recognize is that ALL of these recent attacks on our human rights and personal freedoms are the result of religion.

What other reason is ever given for denying women access to abortion? The belief that it is against God's wishes.

What other reason is given for keeping gays from getting married? That it is against the teachings of the Bible. 

What other reason is given for the attacks on science that we have seen lately? The fact that Evolution disproves the Genesis account of creation and the evidence that man can destroy the climate on the planet that religious people believe God provided to his people.

That is pretty much it in a nutshell.

So please tell me how to fight against all of this WITHOUT attacking it at its source.

Religion played a very important part in the development of mankind on this planet, there is no real argument against that. However today, in my opinion, that benefit is greatly reduced, and the negative impact seems to be growing exponentially.

So forgive me if I step on a few of your toes, but the battle is bigger than you.

And what we are fighting for is bigger than any one religion, or any one religion's god.

We are fighting for our very futures. And the future of our children. And our children's children.