Neighbourhood comes together and kicks out religious haters

From Ggskelding's YouTube Channel: This is a group from a church at the end of a street. Apparently they have been grouping in front of a couple's house and reading their bible loudly for the past 7 years. They may have also driven another couple from the area as well by doing the same thing. Tonight most of our neighbours came out and were successful in getting them to leave. The people who go to that church don't even live in our area! Police came by shortly thereafter.



Awe-inspiring stuff.

Churchgoers, strippers protest one another in Coshocton County

WARSAW, Ohio -- Strip-club owner Tommy George rolled up to the church in his grabber-orange Dodge Challenger, drinking a Mountain Dew at 9 in the morning and smoking a cigarette he had just rolled himself.

Pastor Bill Dunfee stepped out of a tan Nissan Murano, clutching a Bible in one hand and his sermon in the other, a touch of spray holding his perfectly coiffed 'do in place.

Inside the New Beginnings Ministries church, Dunfee's worshippers wore polyester and pearls.

Outside, George's strippers wore bikinis and belly rings.

Both men agree it is classic sinners vs. saints. But George says it is up to America to decide which is which and who is who.

Dunfee says God already has chosen.

"Tom George is a parasite, a man without judgment," Dunfee said. "The word of Jesus Christ says you cannot share territory with the devil."

The battle that has heretofore played out in the parking lot of George's strip club - the Foxhole, a run-down, garage-like building at a Coshocton County crossroads called Newcastle - has shifted 7 miles east to Church Street.

Every weekend for the last four years, Dunfee and members of his ministry have stood watch over George's joint, taking up residence in the right of way with signs, video cameras and bullhorns in hand. They videotape customers' license plates and post them online, and they try to save the souls of anyone who comes and goes.

Now, the dancers have turned the tables, so to speak. Fed up with the tactics of Dunfee and his flock, they say they have finally accepted his constant invitation to come to church.

It's just that they've come wearing see-through shorts and toting Super Soakers.

Alleluia

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Church denounces gay priests after magazine revelations

An Italian Catholic diocese has denounced homosexual priests for their "double life" and said they should not be in the priesthood.

The Diocese of Rome was responding to a magazine article on three homosexual priests that gave details of alleged sexual encounters and trips to clubs.

The diocese said "the honour of all the others" was sullied by their behaviour.

The Church holds that all sexual activity outside marriage is sinful and regards homosexual acts as unnatural.

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Super Heroes vs. the Westboro Baptist Church

They've faced down humans time and time again, but Fred Phelps and his minions from the Westboro Baptist Church were not ready for the cosplay action that awaited them today at Comic-Con. After all, who can win against a counter protest that includes robots, magical anime girls, Trekkies, Jedi and...kittens?



Unbeknownst to the dastardly fanatics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the good folks of San Diego's Comic-Con were prepared for their arrival with their own special brand of superhuman counter protesting chanting "WHAT DO WE WANT" "GAY SEX" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT" "NOW!" while brandishing ironic (and some sincere) signs. Simply stated: The eclectic assembly of nerdom's finest stood and delivered.

As you can see below, the fantastic fanboys delivered the the church a humorous dose of sweet fan justice. ComicsAlliance was there to witness the spectacle in full, which you can indulge in yourself after the jump.

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Debate: Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?

"It stands up for the oppressed and offers spiritual succour to billions say the Church's supporters. But what about the Church's teachings on condoms, gays and women priests, ask the detractors."

Speaking for the motion, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdencombe MP. Speaking against the motion, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.

The rest:
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPlU1EwKxSM
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUOUMqyimhA
Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ8pgdCvNQM
Part 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd_vd1FgkVU

The Spectacle of Faith

As you may have come to realize I am not particularly fond of religion. In fact I'm not that fond of anyone telling me what I can or can't do. Although I know I'm not perfect and if I'm proven wrong then I'm happy to be corrected.

However, when an organisation tries to dictate how I, my friends or my fellow man should live their lives based on something so questionably bogus as the Bible and/or the rules they've made whilst listening to the voices in their head, well its hard not to question why anyone takes them seriously.

See I quite like politics for exactly the reason I don't like religion. Even when I don't agree with someones political point of view I know that through debate and discussion we the people can vote and fight to change laws and bills to suit the needs of the majority. I believe something similar is what Sam Harris means when he talks of a "Science of Morality".

When the organization tries to enforce their bronze-age doctrine on society behind the veil that they are the voice of an omnipotent creator of heaven and earth and their views on what is right and wrong cannot be questioned, well this starts to look an awful lot like a dictatorship. A dictatorship that spans ordinary political boundaries.

Then we hear that at the same time that this organization spins its "infallible" lies, it has been trying to cover up the rape and torture of innocent young children to protect the guilty, and not the innocent, so that the organization can continue to prosper, you have to ask why isn't society trying harder to bring these sick individuals to justice.

When it comes to anything else other than religion we the people stand up together as one and say that is not right, we do not want this in our society, and we put these people before the judicial system.

Josef Fritzel, Gary Glitter, Fred West, Baby P, Shannon Matthews, Jaycee Dugard are all names that we recognize because of their relation to child abuse scandals in recent history.

What is the difference between these stories and the Catholic Church?

Nothing is happening to the Catholic Church.

Below are some links for those who want to read up on just who truly horrible the Catholic Church really is:

For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse

Pope May Be at Crossroads on Abuse, Forced to Reconcile Policy and Words

Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys

In Abuse Crisis, a Church Is Pitted Against Society and Itself

Abuse Case Offers a View of the Vatican’s Politics

Bring the Pope to Justice

A Woman’s Place Is In The Church

The Great Catholic Cover-Up

We Can't Let the Pope Decide Who's a Criminal

The Pope Is Not Above the Law

Tear Down That Wall

The pope should stand trial

Ratzinger is the perfect pope

GOD! I need a beer.

Legal doesn't always mean right

So in March 2006, Westboro protesters showed up at St. John's Catholic Church ("St. John's Kennel" in their formulation) in Westminster for Mr. Snyder's funeral, reportedly carrying signs depicting male anal sex and slogans like "Semper Fi Fags."

For the record, no one has claimed Matthew Snyder was gay. Not that that should matter. But the church's bizarre argument is that the death of "every" dead serviceperson should be celebrated as God's punishment of a gay-tolerant nation.

Cpl. Snyder's father, Albert, sued the "church" for disrupting his son's funeral. In October 2007, he won a $10.9 million verdict. Last September, an appeals court tossed that verdict out.

The worst of it is that the court recently ordered Mr. Snyder to help pay Westboro's legal bills. You heard me. Mr. Snyder, who makes $43,000 a year, must pay $16,500 to the people who made a circus of his son's funeral. "You can do the math," says his attorney, Sean Summers. Snyder has been forced to seek donations online (www.matthewsnyder.org).

Westboro says it will use the money to give the same treatment to another grieving family.

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Amid Calls for Transparency, Pope Describes Dangers of Digital Age

A report by Margret Warner of PBS Newshour from the Vatican to investigate how the Catholic Church is planning to deal with the Child Sex Abuse scandal, and instead describes the dangers of people communicating their opinions more freely over the internet.

VATICAN CITY | We've come to Rome for a week to explore how the new wave in the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal is being seen and dealt with by the Vatican, the power center of worldwide Catholicism. Pope Benedict XVI is coming under increasing pressure, as hundreds of charges of alleged priest abuse of minors explode throughout Europe -- so we were eager to see him at the earliest possible opportunity.

It was the last morning of a three-day conference on how the church should use and deal with the digital media of today. "Have they talked about the sex abuse scandal?" I whispered to a young reporter for Avvenire, the country's dominant Catholic newspaper. She smiled and shook her head: "Not a chance."

So what did the Pope have to say to the masses of people wanting answers and guidance from their religious leader when he arrived?

"The times in which we living knows a huge widening of the frontiers of communication," he said (according to our Italian fixer/producer) and the new media of this new age points to a more "egalitarian and pluralistic" forum. But, he went on to say, it also opens a new hole, the "digital divide" between haves and have-nots.

Even more ominous, he said, it exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And it increases the "dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism," which can lead to "multiple forms of degradation and humiliation" of the essence of a person, and to the "pollution of the spirit." All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide open communication parameters being demanded by the Internet age.

We'll be keeping a close eye on what happens and what is said on this issue from the Vatican in the coming weeks.

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8: The Mormon Proposition

Some interesting questions are raised in an up and coming documentary about the Gay Marriage Bill in California and how the people behind the Mormon faith was able to have it removed 6 months later.

Created by several disaffected members of the Mormon Church who are gay, it lays blame for the passage of California’s Proposition 8 squarely upon the Mormon Church. According to the makers of the film, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has spent the last three decades engaged in a vendetta against gays, employing evil “secret combinations” among its members in LDS temples to effect the trashing of gay rights. This venomous film production employs every possible lie to portray the Mormon Church as an oppressive and evil money machine.

I honestly do not understand how people can see homosexual marriage as a threat to anything. They make it to this huge horrible debate, when we should be focusing on much more important things like world poverty and genocide. Its so pathetic.

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Church scandal’s Next Wave: Abused girls

Can we please disband this collection of stone-age imbeciles? Has all compassion been lost in the Catholic Church.

"Father Charlie told the girl with the cascading brown curls and frilly frocks that she was pretty. Special. One of his favourites.

In the small Ontario town of Pain Court, a French-Canadian community near Chatham, Father Charlie’s attention was prized by devout Roman Catholic families like Cecilia McLauchlin’s. His interest in their daughter meant the popular priest, once described as “next to God,” publicly approved of how she was being raised.

So when a gynecologist examined the girl for recurring vaginal infections, it didn’t occur to anyone that Father Charlie was the cause of her physical pain.

Cecilia McLauchlin was only 5 years old."

Now I'm not perfect, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend myself as a people turn to me everytime they have a moral dilemma but why people continually turn to "the church" for guidance is beyond me.

"Now 32, the Chatham woman is the youngest known victim of Father Charles Sylvestre, the smooth-talking priest who groomed his young prey with candies, trinkets and praise. He was convicted in 2006 of sexually assaulting 47 girls over four decades in southwestern Ontario — despite abuse complaints from victims to police, school and church officials during that time."

Can someone tell me why this continues to happen?

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