Why religious whackjobs are dangerous nuts and other fun...

[jsbowden]

A friend pointed me at another fine example of just what Christian Love and Tolerance actually means.

It also made me aware of Fundies Say the Darndest Things, which is a nice little slice of humanity at its finest.

I don't care if you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Toaist, some flavor of pagan, etc...it doesn't matter...if you're so damned blind in your beliefs that you'd suppress or kill others who don't meet your standards, do the rest of us a favor and go take a long fucking walk off of a short fucking pier with cement shoes on.

We.

Don't.

Need.

YOU.

And us atheists are the 'dangerous' ones. Fuck all of you.

Comments

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

I hope you are not implying that somehow the boy committed suicide because his mother rejected his sexuality. That's not how suicide works.

It is perfectly normal for parents, lovers and other close family to blame themselves after a suicide. But the truth is that suicide comes from brain malfunction. It does not have a rational cause even in the cases where it may superficially look like it.

I have had friends that ended their own lives. It has not occurred to me to blame their family or friends or their religion or their sexuality. They died from a tragic illness, just like cancer or asthma.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

No, I'm stating flat fucking out that the boy committed suicide because his mother rejected his sexuality, drove him into depression, and offered no kind of support structure. She dumped her own therapist who told her she was fucking up, because it wasn't what she wanted to hear. Reality wins, and all the wishing in the world won't change that.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Nobody commits suicide because of rejection, neither from parents or lovers or friends or gods. They just do it, because their operating system fails. It is a fluke. It is not a decision, it is a brain malfunction. Neither the deceased nor their family or friends are to blame. To do so is just unfair.

I've lived long enough to have friends commit suicide, and friends who you'd think had reason to but never did. It is just a glitch. It just happens, like cancer. A tragedy, but it confers no moral judgement on any of the involved.

[pokeypenguin.livejournal.com]

It's fair to say that some people will suicide no matter what the people around them do for them, and it's fair to say that some people won't no matter what life throws their way. To that extent, it's a malfunction, yes.

Alcoholism is a malfunction, too, and if you're pouring vodka down an alcoholic's throat, you hold a little responsibility when they fall off the wagon.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

True. In the case linked to, for instance, the decision to pull the kid out of therapy was probably a bad one, or at least it incurred culpability compared to handing it all to the therapist and hoping for the best. If we had known that she actually did get that far, and not found him another authorized therapist, I'd blame her for that. But not for wanting him to repress his sexuality. She has every right to disagree with her son on that, just like two of my personal friends were thrown out from their homes for refusing to give up Christianity. Sometimes parents and teenagers just cannot reach an agreement on subjects that cause intense emotion. This is a sad facet of life, but does not somehow cause a suicide to become a murder.

[thette.livejournal.com]

If it wasn't for the harassment about their sexuality, why do so many more GLBT teens try to (and succeed) kill themselves?

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

I thought that was just a stereotype, but since you say it I feel secure that it is a scientific fact. I haven't read any research on the connection, nor have I seen it in real life. (Gays seem to avoid me in the flesh, perhaps because I look so obviously Chonservative?)

I have however heard about the increased suicide rate in children who have been bullied (a topic of personal interest to me) and have learned that the typical bullying victim has displayed unusual behavior from early childhood. In fact, bullying victims are generally more different from their classmates than the bullies are. This implies that there are fundamental differences in personality, possibly on a neurological level. Could this also be the case for gay and lesbian teens?

For another example, extraordinarily creative people and their close relatives seem to be prone to bipolarity and also higher suicidal rates.

[selki.livejournal.com]

I have read studies that the suicide rate among gay teenagers is significantly higher than among the general teenage population. I don't have any handy cites, though, and I don't know how that rate compares to teenage bullying victim suicide rates.

[thette.livejournal.com]

It's enough of a fact to have the RFSL worried about it. They did a survey a few years back, but I can't find it or their press release about it on their website.

Creativity and mental illness does go in families. I wouldn't link that to non-hetero sexualities, though.

[selki.livejournal.com]

If we had known that she actually did get that far, and not found him another authorized therapist, I'd blame her for that.

I don't understand what you're saying here, or what connection it has to your previous sentence. Re-phrase?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide has links to various studies with various conclusions.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Rephrasing.
The boy was in therapy already, presumably his mother had either initiated this or agreed with it. However, she was in the process of taking him out of that therapy because the therapist encouraged homosexual activity. She wanted a therapist that would encourage celibacy. We don't know however whether she found such a therapist, or whether or not her son was in therapy when he committed suicide.

To withhold therapy from your child is something to be blamed for. To want a conservative therapist when you are a conservative mother living in a conservative country is... normal. You can't really blame people for acting like normal. You can disagree with them, sure, as do I. But you can't expect people to foresee and forestall a suicide when it requires extraordinary measures to do so.

[selki.livejournal.com]

Nobody commits suicide because of rejection, neither from parents or lovers or friends or gods. They just do it, because their operating system fails. It is a fluke. It is not a decision, it is a brain malfunction.

It looks to me like we haven't pinned such a complicated matter down yet, certainly not for all cases. Is it possible you may be over-generalizing from a few sad personal experiences?

Neither the deceased nor their family or friends are to blame. To do so is just unfair. ... [Suicide] just happens, like cancer.

Most types of cancers have risk factors. So does suicide. There are factors that appear to make it more likely. Parents, more than anyone else, are responsible for their childrens' welfare. Parents can increase suicide risk factors by their words and actions, just like they can increase their childrens' chances of various diseases by not providing a healthy variety of vegetables at mealtime. It's not unfair to point that out or to be angry at those parents.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Yes, one reason I chose to compare suicidal depression to cancer is exactly that both are partly genetic (especially early in life) and partly have environmental risk factors, which typically take years to come to fruition.

I would not be surprised if suicide rate is affected by sexual abuse in childhood, or random acts of violence, or drug abuse in the home with the randomized behavior that typically follows from that. When kids are small, the brain is still developing its basic structures. But that's completely different from "parents need to align their views on sexual morality with that of their child".