Conservative Babylon

Backstory: “EEOC Sues Tulsa Lighting Supplier for Religious Discrimination,” June 22, 2012

Voss Lighting to Pay $82,500 to Settle EEOC Religious Discrimination Lawsuit

Qualified Applicant Denied Job Because His Religious Beliefs Differed From the Company’s, Federal Agency Charged

TULSA, Okla. — Voss Electric Co., doing business as Voss Lighting, will pay $82,500 and furnish company-wide injunctive relief to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. The EEOC had charged that the Lincoln, Neb.-based supplier of replacement lighting products violated federal law by refusing to hire a qualified applicant at its Tulsa location because of his religious beliefs. (more…)

Courtesy of the Wisconsin Gazette:

March 14, 2013 — The former pastor of a northwest Indiana megachurch is scheduled for sentencing today for persuading a 16-year-old girl to engage in a sexual affair with him by telling her that Jesus desired it.

(more…)

Video after the jump.

Because you haven’t heard Pat Robertson say anything really stupid since… well, since this, which happened a mere three days before the story you’re about to read: “Pat Robertson: Out! Out, You Demons of Goodwill!.”

Is it just us, or is Pat getting weirder, faster…? (more…)

Well, at least we can’t call the Catholic cardinals a bunch of hypocrites today — the guy they picked as the new Pope is just as misogynistic and vilely homophobic as the last one.

Actually, we may be wrong about that — this guy might even be worse. While Ratzinger said gays were mental cases (“intrinsically disordered”), we don’t recall him ever saying marriage equality was the domain of Neanderthals. No matter; essentially branding gays children of the devil puts Ratso and this new guy on equal footing. In any case… (more…)

Ricky, Ricky, Ricky… Either you think you’re too clever by half (you’re not), or you really are so dumb, you think American Atheists is (yes, “is,” not “are”; it’s the name of an organization) was silly enough to pay for a platform to express your impotent dreams of a ca.-14th-century Catholic theocracy.

Either way, Ricky, you are too dumb to realize that every American in his right mind will be scared to death at the idea of a nation under your god. And that includes Catholics. Well, at least those whose names aren’t Bill Donohue. (more…)

Claims to fame: 65-year-old founder and former pastor, Living Word Fellowship of Santa Clara, St. George, Utah; right-wing extremist; one-time Republican candidate for Utah’s 2nd District; repeat GOP delegate; ex-U.S. Marine; Vietnam veteran; husband; father of five; grandfather of 18; convicted child molester

Moral apex: Sexually molested at least four young girls as young as ten years old, all relatives, under the guise of having them to his home to give them a “Godly upbringing.” (Family members (more…)

Backstory:

• “Trial’s On for Amish-Mennonite Pastor Accused of Aiding International Child Abduction of Isabella Miller-Jenkins,” August 8, 2012

• “Justice! Amish-Mennonite Pastor Kenneth L. Miller Convicted of Abetting International Kidnapping of Isabella Miller-Jenkins,” August 15, 2012 (more…)

“Projection is the psychological phenomenon where someone denies some aspect of their behavior or attitudes and assumes instead that everyone else is doing or thinking so instead. It is usually seen as the externalisation of a person’s negative traits, placing blame on an outside force such as the environment, a government, a society or other people. …”

Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!
By Iulia Filip, Courthouse News Service
SEVIERVILLE, Tenn. (CN) – A Christian pastor assaulted a parishioner to “cast out” a “demon,” then bragged that he had “punched the devil and knocked the devil’s tooth out,” the parishioner claims in court. (more…)

A guy from Minnesota named Gerard Cellette is facing a whopping 116 counts of fraud, money laundering and other highly illegal shenanigans related to what the Orange County, California, D.A. calls “the largest Ponzi scheme to be prosecuted in Orange County history.” Cellette is accused of defrauding 55 victims in California — “without ever entering the State of California,” notes the D.A. — out of $21 million. There’s a nice, long explanation below that details exactly what Cellette is accused of doing (and why, until he was extradited to California a couple of weeks ago, he’d been twiddling his thumbs in a Minnesota prison) — but first, let’s hit the convoluted backstory. (more…)

Video after the jump.

We could ask what’s the matter with Republican women in general, but we don’t feel like writing an entire book today. We do think they must be serving crazy juice at RNC conventions or something; one has to be nuts, or at least pretty self-loathing, to subjugate oneself to the rape culture that is the modern GOP. B.T. — Before Teabaggers — not so much; while we still can’t forgive Mamie Eisenhower for her treatment of Jackie Kennedy, we’re sure Mamie would never have given her blessing to the craziness that is no longer her husband’s party. Can you imagine Mamie taking forced transvaginal ultrasounds lying down? (Whether or not you want to imagine that is another matter.) (more…)

“Christian leaders are saying…

“As a happily married woman I want all my friends to meet their life’s companion. I have recommended Christian Mingle to all my single friends as a safe place to both connect with other people of faith but also to learn Christian principles of dating and marriage.”

~Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America (more…)

Kim John and Francis Philip, Rastafarian “prophets” — sent by God to destroy the demons that “infest” the Vatican — already escaped the death penalty once. Now they (and we) are waiting to hear their fate (their sentences were supposed to come down today, but we haven’t heard anything yet).

Both pleaded guilty last week to slaughtering a nun and a priest and setting parishioners on fire during a New Year’s Eve Mass in St. Lucia in 2000. (more…)

Hear that? It’s the sound of crickets — which is exactly what we expected to hear while waiting for Michael Salman‘s defenders (“He’s being persecuted for being a Christian!”) to again rush to his defense now that Salman, his wife, and his brother have all been nailed — not to a cross, but for for fraud.

Make sure to read the backstory in order to 1) understand why we find Salman one of the most irritating Conservative Babylonians we’ve ever documented (and a scary one, too, (more…)

Backstory:

• “16 Amish Beard Cutters Convicted of Hate Crimes Against ‘Religious Enemies’,” September 22, 2012

• “Somebody Call the Wahhhmbulance for the Amish Beard-Cutter Gang,” October 1, 2012

We think it’s a tad harsh to sentence anybody to 15 years for launching a mass hair-cutting attack — after all, Mitt Romney wasn’t even reprimanded for doing the same thing, and he apparently did it with his own two hands (unlike Amish ringleader Samuel Mullet) — but then, nobody asked little old us. In any case, here’s the latest, directly from our friends at the FBI: (more…)

Video after the jump.

The sweet-looking old dude pictured at left is Clarence Bright — who didn’t do anything, other than cark it, which is pretty much what most of us can expect to do by the time we’re 93 years old.

It was his son, police say, who did the unthinkable — unthinkable, that is, for those of us not so “very religious”: The (understandably-unidentified) 48-year-old reportedly, uh, spirited Dear (more…)

Claims to fame: Anti-gay “ex-gay” who believes every gay person who lives an honest life “surely deserves … eternal anguish and torture”; writes wrote a series of essays for the rabidly anti-gay Christian Post about being “saved from a lifestyle full of drunkenness and homosexuality” — which, of course, he blames on pornography, child molestation, his parents’ divorce, his mother’s bisexuality, a “demonic presence”… all those usual fallbacks delusional “ex-gays” use to try to convince themselves (and you) that they simply aren’t born gay. Flaming hypocrite. Shameless liar. (more…)

Video after the jump.

Leonard Threadcraft, 39 (he was just a few days short of his 40th birthday), was the pastor of Liberty Full Gospel Baptist Church / Liberty Full Gospel Worship Center, a.k.a. Liberty Full Life Ministries, Inc., Thomasville, Georgia.

Now he’s just dead. (more…)

Backstory: “Anti-Gay Alliance Defense Fund Lawyer Lisa Biron Charged with Producing Child Pornography,“ November 18, 2012

The pathetic excuse for a human being you see at left (the sight of which has the same effect on us as syrup of ipecac) is Lisa Biron, lawyer for the professional anti-gay organization Alliance Defense Fund* (although they’re pretending she never was), graduate & board member of Pat Robertson‘s Regent University, and member of the just-as-wildly-homophobic Christian Legal Society and radical right-wing Federalist Society. (more…)

“Both ways” meaning: You can’t take advantage of being a for-profit corporation and claim a religious exemption at the same time:
 

By Rose Bouboushian, reprinted wih the kind permission of Courthouse News Service

(CN) — A family of Mennonite cabinetmakers cannot block a provision of health care reform that forces them to cover the contraceptive needs of employees, a federal judge ruled.

Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. and five of its owners sued the Obama administration in 2012 and demanded an injunction to the Women’s Preventive Healthcare regulations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.

(more…)