Societal Abuse Fundamentals: A Rant in D-Minor, Movement 1

Societal Abuse Fundamentals: A Rant in D-Minor, Movement 1

By Walter Beck

WARNING: The following contains explicit content and material that some may find offensive, blasphemous, degrading, disgusting, sacrilegious, or crude. Those who do find such an offense are requested to exit now.

Alright, let me give you a scenario. Most of you out there know my job as a camp counselor, well let’s say I tell a kid that if he doesn’t do exactly what I say, my boss, the Camp Director, will take him down to the basement and mercilessly torture him not only for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, but for the rest of his life, even for the rest of eternity.

Are you shocked at that idea? Offended? Good, glad you are. So am I, I take my job very seriously and would never do anything to harm one of the kids. If I ever said anything like that to a kid at work, I would not only be fired, but I would be charged with harassment and intimidation, not to mention losing my Scouting career for explicitly violating their policy of Youth Protection.

However, if I told that same kid that God would throw him into an endless pit of torture, it would be perfectly legal. In fact, not only would be it be perfectly legal, I would be applauded by many for “upholding traditional values”. Isn’t that fucked up? That it is perfectly legal to tell an impressionable kid that if he isn’t a good boy, God is going to throw him into a place where he will be subjected to the cruelest of torments for all eternity?

That sort of shit can scar a kid for life, believe me, I know. When I was fourteen, I attended a fundamentalist Baptist summer camp and got the ever-loving piss scared out of me by a preacher known as Randy Hogue and his infamous sermon “Elevator Ride to Hell”. The experience fucked up me pretty good and the cruelest part I remember is sitting there, sobbing my eyes out, and all the adults having a sick, satisfied look on their face at our reaction.

Alright, we’re already offended, let’s turn things up a notch. Let’s say I have a kid, the gods above decided that my seed needed to be spread, so I have a kid. I know, most of you would consider it a sign of the apocalypse that there would be a Walter Thomas Beck IV, but let’s just roll with it.

So I have a kid and my kid is sick and I refuse to take him to the doctor. I flat out refuse and my kid gets really sick and maybe even dies; all because I refused to get him medical care. Now what do you think would happen? I would be arrested and charged with child endangerment, abuse, not to mention the fact that CPS would come in there and take my kid away.

But if I claim I didn’t get my kid to the hospital because of my faith, guess what? I can cop a plea and maybe even win. There have been dozens of cases where parents were charged with endangerment and then got off because they claimed their faith prohibited them from giving their child medical care. And even if they didn’t get off completely, they got reduced charges.

Jesus, this is pretty sick ain’t it? I mean, look, if you’re a legal adult and you want to believe in endless torture or refuse to get medical care, that’s your business. More power to you, hey I’m a writer, it’s sort of nice when people believe in fantasy; it makes my job more fun. But when you involve children in this sort of shit, you are just a sad excuse for a human being.

Well we’ve gotten pretty heavy so far, so let’s turn it down just a bit, take a bit of a break. Most religious types like the ones I’ve described are the strongest advocates for censorship and piss and moan about the violence and filth of Hollywood “corrupting our children”. Yet, these were also the same parents who took their kids to see the 2004 snuff film The Passion of the Christ.

Folks, trust me on this one, I’ve been watching low-budget horror films, slashers and splatter flicks for a long time. I have a fairly large archive of the bloodiest, goriest slabs of entertainment out there, including such infamous films as Pieces, Cannibal Holocaust, Faces of Death and Silent Night Deadly Night. And I tell you now, The Passion of the Christ is by far the bloodiest of them all, no film has taken such slow-motion delight in the torture and execution of a human being. Leatherface eat your victim’s heart out, Mel Gibson is the most sadistic film villain on the block.

So once again, how fucked up is that? A parent who bitches about the violence of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees and screams about how that is “causing the moral bankruptcy of America’s youth” apparently has no problem taking their kid to go see a two-long gore fest about a man being tortured to death.

Well let’s move out of the realm of children for a bit and look at a bigger picture. Once again, I’m going to give you a scenario. Let’s say I’m working on a political campaign and you may not necessarily agree with it, but we have some mutual friends. So I come to your house one day and tell you “this is how much you earn and this is how much I feel you can donate to this campaign” and I sit there, smiling malevolently, until you write a check for this campaign I’m working on.

Now if I did that, that would be extortion, right? As I’m implying dire consequences for you if you don’t donate to my campaign. I think we can tack intimidation on there too. These are some heavy felonies. If I did this, I would be seeing Terre Haute in a whole new way as I would be doing some hard time over in the Federal Penitentiary we have here.

But wait a minute; once again with the power of God, I can cop a plea here. The scenario I just described is likewise based on something very real. In 2008, the Mormon Church funneled millions in church resources into California’s Proposition 8. The way they did it was brilliant, through the establishment of front organizations to keep the heat off the Church as well as sending out local stake presidents to members’ homes and sitting there until they wrote a check. The LDS Church committed one of the most brilliant extortion schemes in contemporary American history and they got away clean.

So let’s wrap it up here, I’ve discussed fear, abuse, intimidation and extortion, all real things, all really committed by religious fundamentalists and all protected under the laws of the United States of America. And yet, to these guys, I’m somehow “evil” and “reprobate” because I listen to a few rock n roll records, have long hair and am bisexual. Yet, I’ve never abused, intimidated or extorted another human being. I couldn’t, I have a conscience.

So where is the real evil here?