Conservative Babylon

The hiatus has ended.

Stay tuned.

I used to be the only one who did this. Now I’m not, and now, there are many, many people who do it better.

I’m not in competition with anyone, but I have to consider, seriously, whether I can do it well at all.

For me, it was never a race to see who could get the most shocking news about right-wingers up first — it was about dig-down-deep research, and presenting the most comprehensive, easily-digestible view out there, by which I mean: major snark softening the most horrible stories so that you could read them without throwing up, in order to make a point, that point being: the people who want to control and restrict your very life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, are the biggest hypocrites of all.

But in the eight years I’ve been doing this (and it has been eight years — where has the time gone?), a lot of other people have taken up the mantle and have been doing the same thing.

I want to say that I don’t harbor any resentment (although, truth be told, I think I do)… that, as I have been telling myself for the better part of a decade: it’s not who gets the credit — it’s that these stories get out there, in order to make the public aware, because we’re all on the same side… right?

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Sometimes, you (or, rather, we) just need a break from the scum.

We will be back on the air momentarily.

Stay tuned. You will not be disappointed.

There are few stories that so greatly test our commitment to the prohibition of the death penalty as this one does:

According to her attorney, [Amber Lynn Bracci] hit the baby because she thought the young boy was “possessed.” …

Bracci, 19, and her boyfriend John Weaver, 20, both face homicide by child abuse charges in the death of 16-month-old Rowan Bracci. Bracci’s bond was denied. … A $50,000 bond was set for Weaver. …

The coroner says the boy died of head trauma early last month. …

“I went in there and picked my son up out of bed at 10:30 in the morning and he was limp,” Bracci said while on WCSC-TV in Charleston. …

“I may not have been a perfect mother. …”

The whole, revolting story (for strong stomachs only): “Attorney: Mom Who Killed Baby Said He Was Possessed,” digtriad.com, February 6, 2011

Also: WCSC’s story from January has video.

Or, as we like to call her: Ol’ 17 45’s @ 22 Hit-’N'-Run:

Guilty: Vitalija Vasciunaite, 22, student & basketball player, California Baptist University (which describes itself as “a top Baptist Bible college”) affiliated with the California Southern Baptist Convention, Riverside, California, of “maiming another person while driving intoxicated and felony hit and run. A native of Lithuania, she faces possible deportation and up to 15 years in prison when she is sentenced May 31.” Continues APB: “Vasciunaite, a 5-9 junior guard at California Baptist, told police she consumed seven beers before borrowing a car to drive to Harrisonburg, where she drank 10 beers at a party before making the hour-long return trip to the Charlottesville area. She first told police she didn’t remember hitting anything, but later said she recalled striking something but didn’t think it was serious enough to stop.” Turns out she had mowed down a Virginia highway worker. Her BAC five hours later was .15, “nearly twice the legal limit.” Story: Press-Enterprises, February 9, 2011; Associated Baptist Press, February 10, 2011

We want to let you in on some administrivia:

Judging from the way folks come to ConBab and move around the site, we’ve come to the conclusion that not every religious miscreant (accused, convicted, or otherwise) is getting enough attention in our standard Black Collar Crime Round-Ups. (more…)

We don’t give a horse’s patoot if Roy R. Browne identifies as gay; anybody who identifies as a Baptist Republican is a conservative — and is propping up two of the most rabidly oppressive, anti-gay institutions in the United States world.

We have no idea if this boy is guilty or innocent (but you can guess our guess): (more…)

The reason is simple: We are inundated with comment spam.

For every valid comment we get, there are — honestly — 200 to 300 spam comments.

We’ve blocked every IP address in Russia, the Ukraine, half of Europe, most of South America, almost all of Southeast Asia, the entire continent of Africa, and at least three dozen spamhauses within the U.S, and yet it keeps coming, and we can’t find the magic spell to stop it. The spammers are so far ahead of us, we can’t keep up.

This does not mean legitimate visitors with something to say cannot comment. If you are a carbon-based life form (and not a spambot), you will read our Privacy Policy/TOS, and follow the instructions for contacting us. (more…)

Cross-posted from The Lavender Newswire

For those fortunate enough not to know of Scott Lively, he is the “former director of the California tentacle of the American Family Association and the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA)” and pastor of Abiding Truth Ministries “[a.k.a. Defend the Family]” — named to the SPLC’s latest list of anti-gay hate groups — “author of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuals and the Nazi Party, and Holocaust revisionist,” who is almost singularly responsible for fomenting the raging homophobia pervading Latvia and primarily responsible for inspiring Uganda’s Kill-the-Gays bill. (more…)

David Tolliver quit his post as the executive director of the 600,000-member Missouri Baptist Convention over “immoral behavior.”

The MBC issued a terse press release Friday:

With deep regret we announce, Dr. David Tolliver has resigned as Executive Director of the Missouri Baptist Convention due to immoral behavior with a woman. His resignation is effective immediately. Jay Hughes, Associate Executive Director of Support Services, will serve as acting interim executive director until a permanent Interim executive director is named by the Executive Board.

Ironically (but of no surprise, at least to anyone who follows Southern Baptist news), Tolliver, notes the Post-Dispatch, “had been named as the interim director in 2007, after the board fired his predecessor, the Rev. David Clippard for what an investigative committee at the time called ‘rumors affecting (Clippard’s) character.’”

Fifty-five year-old David Ladeau of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, former church choir director and organist (we’re pretty certain we know which church, but we don’t want to risk a mistake), had been sitting in jail, charged with possession of child pornography, since June of 2009 when he began exchanging letters with his 61-year-old brother Daniel Ladeau of Summertown, Tennessee… only this wasn’t the “How are you? I am fine” variety of correspondence. It was in code. The feds were called in, deciphered the messages, and discovered that the Ladeau brothers were exchanging tips on collecting child pornography over the Internet. (more…)

Claims to fame: Episcopal priest, Holy Cross Church, Street, Maryland; former minister, Holy Trinity Church, Troy, Montana; former rector, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Libby, Montana; former owner, Yaak River Lodge; current owner, Dirty Shame Saloon & Yaak River Cabins, Yaak, Montana; teetotaler; accused child molester

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We at ConBab Central are often (OK, usually) quite flippant about your run-of-the-mill right-winger peccadilloes — but there’s one thing we’re dead serious about: sexual abuse committed against children. It is, in our book, simply unforgivable, and Must. Be. Stopped.

Since we first began ConBab in 2003 (yes, we’re entering our eighth year), we have never faltered in our dedication to exposing the rank hypocrisy of right-wingers who have, either overtly and aggressively or more underhandedly and obliquely, appointed themselves society’s moral arbiters — and who would relish the ability to control your body, your relationships, your morality, your very life. (more…)

Claims to fame: Eighth president of Israel (2000-07); Deputy Prime Minister under Benjamin Netanyahu; former Minister of Tourism; former member of Knesset (Likud); right-wing nationalist hawk (think: equivalent of a hardcore Republican neoconservative); misogynist; convicted rapist

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This is a plagiarist (and we’re not linking live to it, because we don’t want boost this creep’s traffic ranking):

The “article” cited above is nothing but entire paragraphs stolen, without so much as attribution, let alone permission, from Conservative Babylon, Mormonism-Unveiled, the Associated Press, the Phoenix New Times, and the East Valley Tribune, chopped up and rearranged into something that, apparently, is supposed to look like an original work.

All have been notified.

That is all.

The Minnesota GOP isn’t the only state party “having trouble filling chairmanships with people who aren’t political embarrassments” — just look at this motley bunch in Florida, all of whom either were or are in the running to head the state Republican Party: Jim Greer’s about to go on trial, Deborah Cox-Roush is scrambling to run damage control in light of her recently-discovered DUI, and now we hear a business partner of, and a company owned by, Vern Buchanan, U.S. House Rep. from Florida’s 13th, have been slapped with an FEC lawsuit. (more…)

Simple story: Vincent D. Reda, 76-year-old chairman of the Republican Party of Rockland County, New York, was arrested Sunday and charged with shoplifting a pea coat (yes, the New York Daily News says he tried to “take a pea”) from Macy’s in West Nyack. He says it was all a mistake, that he was trying to return the coat. The cops say no, he took the coat from the store, put it in a bag, tried to leave, and set off the security alarm. He says he just got the coat he was trying to return mixed up with one on the rack.

We don’t believe for a minute that Reda would risk arrest shoplifting a coat. Just look at the man: What he needs more than anything is a good toupee.

In any case, Reda is set to appear in court January 12th.

What can we say about Chuck Phelps without using many four-letter words? Not much, so we’ll let the story speak for itself.

In 1997, Tina Anderson, a 15-year-old member of Trinity Baptist Church, an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) church, in Concord, New Hampshire, was allegedly raped, twice, by 38-year-old church deacon Ernest Willis. Her pastor, Chuck Phelps, reported the incident to police, but authorities could never move forward with the case because Anderson disappeared; she was sent the Colorado home of a deacon of another IFB church (Tri-City Baptist), where she was homeschooled and restricted in her contact with the outside world. (more…)

Here’s one we missed in 2010, who deserves his very own spotlight.

He was a youth minister at Rossville Church of Christ in Rossville, Illinois, junior high track coach at Rossville-Alvin Grade School, tutor and self-described “minister to the community,” but we’ll always think of Andy Thomas as a witch hunter who went on a crusade to oust Wiccans from his town — until he was charged with sexual assault of a child (meaning: actual, physical sexual assault of a teenage boy), and sexual exploitation (meaning: he allegedly tried to get teenage boys to send him dirty pictures over the Internet by pretending to be a teenage girl — actually, several girls, and boys). (more…)

This will certainly be the most sickening story you’ve ever read on ConBab (and maybe ever will). We guarantee it will disturb you as it has us — and we warn you now that the more senstive reader should probably turn away. On the other hand, we cannot think of a more devastating story to illustrate the very real dangers of fundamental Christianity (or any form of fundamentalism), especially when it has been warped so badly, so beyond any similarity to its presumed original message.

If you do read this, just don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Tema, Wikipedia tells us, “population 209,000 (2005), is a city on the Atlantic Ocean coast, east of the capital city of Accra, in the region of Greater Accra, in Ghana, West Africa. Originally a small fishing village, it grew after the construction of a large harbour in 1961 and is now is the nation’s largest sea port. … Tema is also the only well planned city by Ghana’s first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. But in recent times, the beauty of the city is being destroyed by overpopulation stemming mainly from rural-urban migration.”

Overpopulation, however, is the least of its troubles. Ghana, like much of Africa, is a hotbed of superstition, the result of a widespread lack of education combined with the most perverted form of Christianity, which seems less concerned with eliminating irrational fears of witches and demons than with exploiting those fears to bolster its own agenda. (more…)