Category: philosophy/religion topics
Have any of you heard of the Hell House put on by some fundamentalist Christians?
The above link is to a Youtube describing it. The video bloggers talking about it are a couple of young hipsters called the Young Turks but dig a little after you've watched their vid and you'll see they're actually right about this hell house.
I first heard of it in the early 2000s. What strikes me interesting are the people who go to hell, and those who apparently don't. Scam your veterans and deport their jobs overseas? No hell for you. Steal money from countless people's retirement funcs? You're A - OK because probably you pay for the Christo-capitalist infrastructure that supports the fundies. In other words, if you are a corporate sovereign, you have the protestant equivalent of an indulgence.
Their portrayal of things like abortions and suicides is deceptively wrong.
Put it in frank terms: Homeland security is very serious about biohazards. So serious in fact that we don't deceive you by making stuff up and misleading you. You can think of a ton of other examples I'm sure.
But, taking a deeper look, who's really at fault here? We have a society that nourishes this type of extremism. I never witnessed something this extreme when I was in Florida. But are we who sat by, to keep things on an even keel with the family, really any less guilty? We're the sane ones, after all. The real fire breathers may not be all right in the head, but we are.
It's like the old poem says: "Into our town the hangman came." Look that up if you don't know what I'm talking about: there's even a good narration of that poem on Youtube.
It's all well and good to point out the fundamentalists' tactics. But we let them do it. Not you, if you are still in your 20s, and probably have a right to be angry at us who sat on the sidelines and let these things go haywire over the past decade and a half or so.
If they really have something to say, they have no need of misleading people with inaccurate information. Again, look at the groups that their portrayal shows going to hell. Those with the American protestant indulgences, those who actually do the most damage to the most people get the freest pass.
So, have any of you been to one of these? Were you dragged there, or did you want to go? Were you made to stay against your will as "a safety concern?" (What a dishonorable insult to those who work in real public safety).
Here's a theater's perspective on Hell House.
This group are actors and theater performers, not Conservative Evangelicals but they have attempted to reproduce the purchased Hell House script in New York, more as an idea. An idea to bring these beliefs to a group of people who never saw this before. If you're raised in the South this may sound strange but many of us never saw the macabre that is full-fledged fundamentalism, even those of us raised around fundamentalism in the North. I found that interview interesting. None are supporting the position of the Hell Housers but were simply bringing the production to New York.
Finally, here is a scholarly review of these Hell Houses.
I did see a production of Heaven's Gates Hell's Flames when in Florida. It was aimed not just at teenagers but at parents who lived a life and made a miserable and macabre end for their kids because they weren't doing it right. In one scene, the hardworking father had his own questions about religion and all this, his son ended up going to hell because his father wasn't doing as the mother was. I try to remain a rational human being, generally above the fray of a lot of these things, but I will admit to being quite freaked out by the occurrence, as a young parent at the time.
Let me start by saying, I am an Independent Baptist, and by pure association, fall into one of these fundamentalist groups. I've been to Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames, and thought it was a little weird. The intent, from what I understand, is to scare the hell out of people. I have a lot of problems with this approach, as I do not feel it is condusive to how Christ would have done things. Besides that, I'm not a fan of playing mind games with people to bring about a conversion to Christianity. In my opinion, this would be a false conversion, and would have nothing to do with trusting Christ. Whether you believe in Him or not, I'm sure we can agree that force-feeding any religion down people's throats is wrong.
Didn't a lot of this start with Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority and other similar folks? What I'm talking about is all the concentration on things like homosexuality and abortion?
As a gay male, I had a difficult enough time accepting my homosexuality. This is because as a teen growing up in upstate New York in the late 70s and early 80s, I revered my parents and other relatives, and homosexuality was seen even then as abnormal. You didn’t want to be a “fag,” a “queer,” a “fairy.” (for those of you who don’t have punctuation enabled on your screenreaders, I put this in quotes.) When I made this grand discovery about myself, the first thing I wondered was whether I should either run away or commit suicide. And you wanna know what the extreme irony was? I was not brought up in a religious household. Yet I still had to deal, and the thing I chose to do for so many years was to hide from my real self. I did this so as not to disappoint those I loved most. When I moved to Manhattan I could finally be myself, but this was a self I chose to hide from my family. And ultimately, even though I was semi-out for years, I met a woman and thought I could love her enough to be married to her and be happy. I ended up hurting her and betraying my real self. And while I’m probably far from being the only one who’s ever gone down this path, the other irony of my life is that I moved back to my home town and am now more out here than I ever thought I’d be. Large portions of my family now know about me, and I’m completely out at work. And while I’m very happy with the self that I am now, it took me a very long time, and I’m gunna be 49 in a few weeks, wondering whether or not I’ll ever find a boyfriend/partner. I bring all this to mind because while it might not fit the conversation at hand, I’m extremely angered by this Hellhouse thing because here are these people making something that I consider a wonderful thing into something to not only be ashamed of, but to be afraid of. And it doesn’t even make any sense. The only difference between me and a straight person seeking love is that I’m seeking love from someone of my own gender. It may not be your thing, but I can’t control what attracts me. I did not decide to be gay any more than a straight person decided to be straight. Yet I’m going to hell for expressing love in a way that’s unacceptable? These Christofascists who cannot accept their gay sons and daughters drive them to suicide by attempting to change them into something they’re not, and we who accept ourselves and dare to love in a manner that’s “sinful” are going to hell? If this is a loving god, I think he’s a prick and I want nothing to do with him, and anybody who takes this bullshit seriously oughtta be ashamed of themselves, particularly Christians who are commanded by Christ their king to “love one another as I have loved you.”.
Johndy,
I think you and others in our age range who are gay have a lot to contribute to younger people who don't really know what it was like then. It's easy for some of them to say 'alternate lifestyle' or talk about reparative therapy for gays, etc. but while you were struggling through the 1980s with your sexuality, many of us were being downright punks about it.
I was. This is not some Christian or Feminist mantra about generalized guilt, this is the real thing: I was really unkind to gay people as a young person. I can tell you this is nothing more than just a punk-ass attitude towards a small and vulnerable group. I believe Homeland Security has it right: it's not a phobia but an attitude that can result in acts of terrorism against a small and disenfranchised group of people. I can't whitewash it or claim we didn't know. We're all human beings dammit and we *did* know better. To claim we didn't know is simply a cop-out and not being a man about it and not facing up to responsibility for how we acted. I hate it, when I think about it, especially the more we learn that you all suffered.
I can never respect people who have a beef with the gays, because I cannot have any respect for what I was. Like Johndy said, religion isn't or at least wasn't always a part of the equation. Anyone honorable enough to admit they were wrong in this respect wouldn't use religion as having been an excuse anyway, just do like some of us have and face down your own personal mistakes and leave it at that.
I'm sorry I ever acted that way. Not this religion or feminism-based generalized sorry based on either testosterone or the snake in the garden. No, I mean for my own personal actions when I was a young man, and I can't help but logically conclude those actions made some gay people's lives a hell of a lot harder than they needed to be. Some might be born gay, but none of us are born a punk: we choose to be, or not, as the case may be.
As a Christian, let me contribute this...Leo, you are spot on! I have a cousin who is gay, and he is a wonderful human being. We went to Disney last month, and had an incredible time. Yes, the Bible does teach that that lifestyle is against God, and in the old testament, if the Jews were perfect, they'd have to get rid of people with that lifestyle. It was punishable by death. However, Christ demonstrated by the way He lived, that nobody is perfect, and nobody has the right to mistreat another human being, regardless of lifestyle choice. A true follower of Christ loves his neighbor as himself, and that neighbor might be gay, handicapped, or just a punk who is hard to get along with. Either way, judgment is not ours to give. Hating gays is definitely not a Christian thing, as much as it is a cultural thing. Like you, I was mean to them when I was a young kid, and I regret treating another human the way I did. It was wrong, but it had nothing to do with my faith. In fact, if anything, it made Christians as a whole look bad.
Leo, I definitely appreciate those words. But before you go condemning yourself, let me also make anadmission. I was also unkind to gays in my early teens. I felt I had no other choice at the time. And I think a lot of us, particularly gay boys, probably were. The last thing at that time you wanted was for people to find you out. So, what did you do? You not only hid, but you did everything to prove you were “normal.” And you pretended. You sat there hours at a time daydreaming of things you couldn’t have and dealing with a perpetual hard-on over it and feeling guilt because if you lived the way you wanted, if you chose to express what you were, you would surely disappoint those you loved most. And it was easy for me to do back then. I’m not particularly effeminate, so I could sort of be a chameleon. And when I got less virulent and less openly anti-gay (how’s that for irony?) all I had to do was isolate myself so people wouldn’t know. In time I expressed myself more tolerantly until I could admit to myself what I was. But even then I hid. I ran. I didn’t come out to my mother until I was 25, and then only as bisexual. I did that for years. We gay men are very often regarded as less manly. You know what? I think that for a long time I probably actually was less manly than the proverbial so-called “sissies” that were out there not caring what people thought of them. I’m ashamed of that, and I’m ashamed of a society who still mind-fucks our youth to this day. Yes, things are better, but if gay teens still commit suicide because they’re told they’re worthless perverts who are condemned to hell, it shows me we’ve still got a lot to learn and a lot of growing left to do.
Wow this is a side to the equation I haven't really heard much of. Takes a lot of courage to speak up like that.
Johndy, it's just like anything else...People tend to compensate for their insecurity by making fun of the thing tey struggle with. Thank you for sharing your story. It puts many things in perspective.