Since God punished Haiti for making a deal with Satan, I guess it's cool if we jack their kids (also, I'm back)
Sup, guys? Are you still there? Will I still come up on your RSS feeds? DO YOU STILL LOVE ME?!?!?!
Turns out these days I have more free time than I did last semester. This is probably because I am taking a heavier course load and thus have more procrastinating to do. Anyway, I thought it'd be nice to loudly complain about an entire religion on the Internet again. It's good for the soul, you know.
While you'll likely find that I won't update this as often as I did when I was slacking at my desk job, I do think it's fair to say that I'll be updating with some regularity for the foreseeable future. Hope that's kosh with you guys.
So anyway, on to Haiti. I'm sure you all heard about what a phenomenal douchebag Pat Robertson is. If not, check this out:
But, as it turns out, the fundies have yet to finish exploiting this unspeakable tragedy for their own twisted purposes. See the following (from the Vancouver Sun):
Members of a U.S. Christian group face accusations of child trafficking in Haiti after being stopped at the Dominican Republic border with 33 children they said were orphaned in the Jan. 12 earthquake.Now, I realize that nobody's been convicted of anything (yet), but for the sake of argument, let's assume these allegations are true and that this organization really thought it was a good idea to kidnap Haitian children. Let's see what the Bible has to say on that subject, shall we?
Five men and five women, members of the Baptist group New Life Children's Refuge, have been held since Friday in Port-au-Prince, Agence France-Presse reported Monday.
Haitian authorities said the Americans have no documents showing the children are orphans and no permission to take them away.
"We have information about people trying to steal kids to take them out of the country, which is the reason why the government has decided to reinforce security," AFP quoted Haitian Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue as saying.
Exodus 12:16 says:
Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.I think you all know how I feel about putting people to death (in case you don't, I think it's bad). I think you also know how I feel about the bulk of the Old Law that appears in Exodus and Leviticus (also bad). But Baptists, i.e. literal interpretationists, i.e. fundamentalists believe in the verbatim truth of the Bible, and therefore they believe that it is wrong to kidnap. You know... unless you're saving heathen babies from a life of sin and bringing them to loving, Christian parents who will teach them the way of the Lord and make sure they don't turn out gay or something.
Wait... nope... still wrong. OOPS, New Life Children's Refuge! WTF would Jesus do?
2 comments:
Today's New York Times has a story on this, and it sounds as if the missionaries may have been acting in good faith. Because kids may die while aid workers wait for paperwork on them (assuming that it isn't buried under rubble somewhere), standard operating procedure has been to get the kids to where they can receive treatment first, and deal with the paperwork later. Now that the missionaries have been accused of kidnapping, aid workers are electing to do the paperwork first -- and as a result, the kids are dying. It's a big awful mess.
To my knowledge, however, the kids in this specific instance were not in any immediate danger due to health risks. They were just apparently orphaned children.
I read this today:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35262608/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/
And I have no trouble believing that these people meant well. Saying they acted in good faith, however, seems like a bit of a stretch. The fact of the matter is that they did not represent themselves or their organization well. They mishandled this situation and are facing criminal charges because of it. Good intentions, maybe, but good faith implies that they did not know they were breaking the law. I find that hard to believe.
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