“Diva quality of the soccer star…”
Heh. So true.
Hilarious.
“Catastrophic”
Christians are being slaughtered by the thousands in the Middle East, there was just a horrific attack at a hotel in Mali, and the Pope arrives in Africa to warn about…
Pope Francis celebrated a historic Mass in Kenya on Thursday before delivering a stern environmental warning just days ahead of a key climate change conference in Paris.
Of course.
Stalkers are weird
Please note this post is rated NC-17 for language and obscene content. Proceed at your own risk.
Less than two weeks ago, in response to a lunatic stalker’s harassment stretching into year seven, I posted the following:
Beginning at this moment and going into the future until the world ends, each and every time you contact me or anyone connected with me, I will post more information about you on this website. By continuing on your current course of stalking and harassment, everyone will soon learn where you live, where you work, where you went to school, your phone number and email address, and your perverted sexual fetishes. Then after I have published everything about you here, I will send it to the police.
Yet last night, I received a call from our stalker. So I have to live up to what I promised to do.
Here is where he lives:
Brian J. Fielding
Rual Barao de Torre no 132 apto 801
Rio de Janiero, Ipenama, Brazil 22411-000
He attended Columbia law school and then worked in house for the company formerly known as Intelig Telecomunicacoes Ltda, Praia De Botafog 370-9th Flr, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 22258-9000. He was admitted to the bar on October 3, 1989 with bar number 5467, but his status is currently suspended.
Brian Fielding has sent several disturbing emails, left hundreds and hundreds of appalling comments on this blog, and at least a half-dozen voicemail messages at my workplaces in the last several years, including three in the last 100 days. Here are some of the details of his disgusting sexual fantasies:
[my name],
tonight. park. blow. bottomsup (well, at least your bottom) we. gay. happy. rocking around the world. and wow, my organ ramped and ready and rolling in you.
lonely (and extremely horny) without you
April 9, 2009 7:28 PM IP 187.3.225.40. It’s always nice to be threatened with rape for having a blog.
[my name],
you swallow come better than any man i have ever met. i remember when i lived in kentucky and met this bloke who breed horses, literally and in fugures, and I swear I thought he could drink the water direct from a fire hydrant turned to max. but he is nothing compared to you. you could take more come than crap flows through a goose. you are the man and you are my man, my little boy-toy
comin’
April 9, 2009 10:12 PM IP 187.3.229.115 This same comment was left on a half-dozen posts within a few minute time span. Now to transcribe his recent voicemails:
The message is I am the homosexual lover of [my name] and um he knows me. Just tell him Georgia Peach called. And if he doesn’t return my call or meet me in that park again, then I’m coming to the law firm and I’m going to cause a great big ruckus! And it’s going to be fun! Me and [my name] in that law firm. Ooooh. Tell [my name] that. Because I’m waiting. After he fucked me and he treats me with that kind of disrespect. After he fucked me and he did that to me, he won’t even return my calls. Well, I’m going to go there and I’m going to have a little confrontation.
June 8, 2015 6:37 PM EDT
Um listen you little shit. I’m going to stop by that office. I’m going to tell everyone that you’re my homosexual lover. I’m going to make a big scene. I know where you live. I understand your family. And uh I’m going to cause you a lot of fucking trouble you little fucking cunt. Get ready boy ’cause you’re in deep shit.
May 19, 2015, 11:35 PM EDT
Yes. This is a message for [my name]. I am his homosexual lover. He said that he would meet me last night. He did not. So I am very angry. And I will come visit him at your law firm. And I will expect an explanation and uh he told me he would meet me in the park and he did not. So i am very angry and I will go there and talk to him about it. And I’m tired of him living this double life, it’s ludicrous. It’s disingenuous. It’s dishonest. But I will tell him that when I meet him at your offices soon.
February 28, 2015 6:52 PM EST
What an amazing human being who contributes so much to the world. Thank you Brian for everything you have done for humanity.
Brian’s life began inauspiciously enough on March 31, 1959 in Salt Lake City, Utah, before later living in such locations as Denver, Colorado and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His family members in Utah and Washington state probably do not approve of his behavior. Or the fact that he is a Kate Kelly disciple. For someone in his mid-fifties, he should know better.
Known aliases:
Brian Fielding
brianjfielding
Amos Oz
Bruno Schmidt
Sartor Resartus
[dozens of obscene sexual aliases used in comments on this blog]
Known email addresses used:
s.resartus@yahoo.com
Most readers of this blog are probably completely unaware that we have had a certifiably crazy psychopath stalking us since 2007 or so. It apparently arose over an ideological disagreement. We have had thousands of arguments — even extremely heated ones — on this website. Everyone was able to cope with disagreement in a more or less healthy and socially acceptable way.
Except one Brian Fielding.
He initially started leaving comments on this website discussing his lunatic homosexual fantasies he wanted to act out on us. He escalated by looking up personal information about us and referencing our family members, coworkers, places of worship, places of residence, and other personal information and activities in a threatening manner. He has called my workplaces several times and left his crazed, perverted rants in my offices’ general voicemail boxes. He has sent absurd emails. He is generally a useless human being.
But just like the cop shows I watch, eventually the demented perp gets careless. Brian Fielding, I know who you are. I know all about you. By all means, keep up your obsession as the evidence continues to mount against you.
But be advised: Beginning at this moment and going into the future until the world ends, each and every time you contact me or anyone connected with me, I will post more information about you on this website. By continuing on your current course of stalking and harassment, everyone will soon learn where you live, where you work, where you went to school, your phone number and email address, and your perverted sexual fetishes. Then after I have published everything about you here, I will send it to the police.
Independent of all of that, we reserve all rights and do not waive any of them herein, including the right to file a civil action against you for damages.
Govern yourself accordingly.
From the YouTube description:
From ancient times, men and women have embraced sacred music, different forms of prayer, religious vestments full of symbolism, gestures and rituals to express their innermost feelings of devotion to God.
The variety of these forms of expression is as wide and diverse as the human family. Yet all have the same ultimate purpose: to connect the believer with the object of their devotion in the most personal way—to draw close to God.
Temple garments are worn by adult members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have made sacred promises of fidelity to God’s commandments and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
See also:
Mormon Garment
Mormon Underwear
It would be great to have the United States government taking every precaution for its citizens, instead of declining to take basic safety precautions and telling its citizens to just calm down.
A Dallas healthcare worker who treated Thomas Duncan (the guy who died from Ebola in Texas) flew commercially to Cleveland and back with CDC permission, and then tested positive for Ebola, potentially exposing hundreds of other people across the country to the illness. A healthcare worker who handled fluid specimens belonging to Duncan ended up on a cruise ship (because contagious diseases never spread like wildfire on cruise ships). The US is now trying to get her home.
Listen to this awesome statement from Belize. Oh, that our government might be this responsible:
The Government of Belize said in a statement hours earlier that it had denied a request by U.S. officials to use a Belizean airport to transport a cruise ship passenger considered to be a very low risk for Ebola.
“The passenger never set foot in Belize,” the statement said. “When even the smallest doubt remains, we will ensure the health and safety of the Belizean people.”
Texas health worker isolated on cruise ship over possible Ebola contact
After the last few weeks here in America, I guess it is just so weird for me to hear a government take such a bold stand to keep it citizens safe.
Are Churches “Fake” Charities?
Jon Huntsman Sr. has given away about $1.5 billion to worthy causes – about 80% of his total wealth. He is also spending $200 million building Huntsman Springs, a golf resort and nature reserve in Idaho that will donate all proceeds of real estate sold to his family’s charitable foundation. But neither of these totals include his strict tithing to the Mormon church of 10% of everything he has ever earned.
“My philanthropy is not borne out of my faith,” he says. “They require 10% tithing. I don’t consider that to be philanthropy and I don’t consider it to be part of my philanthropic giving. I consider it as club dues.
“People who put money in the church basket and people who go to church and pay the pastor: that isn’t real philanthropy, that’s just like you belong to a country club. You pay your dues to belong to that church so you pay your tithing or whatever it is. I’ve never added that into my philanthropy in any way because I just think it’s a part of a person’s life.”
It is initially very perplexing to me to hear someone put the philanthropic value of tithing to one’s church — in particular a church of mostly unpaid, lay ministry like the church to which Jon Huntsman belongs — on par with paying membership dues to a country club. For one thing, with respect to the LDS church, tithing is voluntary and (with the exception of our temples, which many members probably do not use more than a few times a year anyway), no secular rights, access, or benefits are lost by not paying a tithe. Most other members have no idea whether one pays tithing or not, and regardless, there is no economic “status” connected with tithe paying because everyone pays a different amount. Even the “widow’s mite” can constitute a full tithe:
And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.
And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.
And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:
For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.
But secondly and most importantly, the federal government places special value on religious organizations, as discussed in Justice William Brennan’s concurrence in Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York, a 1970 US Supreme Court case. The case is about real property taxes, but the excerpt quoted below is instructive:
Government has two basic secular purposes for granting real property tax exemptions to religious organizations. First, these organizations are exempted because they, among a range of other private, nonprofit organizations contribute to the well-being of the community in a variety of nonreligious ways, and thereby bear burdens that would otherwise either have to be met by general taxation, or be left undone, to the detriment of the community. See, for example, 1938 N. Y. Constitutional Convention, Report of the Committee on Taxation, Doc. No. 2, p. 2. Thus, New York exempts “[r]eal property owned by a corporation or association organized exclusively for the moral or mental improvement of men and women, or for religious, bible, tract, charitable, benevolent, missionary, hospital, infirmary, educational, public playground, scientific, literary, bar association, medical society, library, patriotic, historical or cemetery purposes, for the enforcement of laws relating to children or animals, or for two or more such purposes…” N. Y. Real Prop. Tax Law § 420, subd. 1 (Supp. 1969-1970).
Appellant seeks to avoid the force of this secular purpose of the exemptions by limiting his challenge to “exemptions from real property taxation to religious organizations on real property used exclusively for religious purposes.” Appellant assumes, apparently, that church-owned property is used for exclusively religious purposes if it does not house a hospital, orphanage, week-day school, or the like. Any assumption that a church building itself is used for exclusively religious activities, however, rests on a simplistic view of ordinary church operations. As the appellee’s brief cogently observes, “the public welfare activities and the sectarian activities of religious institutions are…intertwined… Often a particular church will use the same personnel, facilities and source of funds to carry out both its secular and religious activities.” Thus, the same people who gather in church facilities for religious worship and study may return to these facilities to participate in Boy Scout activities, to promote antipoverty causes, to discuss public issues, or to listen to chamber music. Accordingly, the funds used to maintain the facilities as a place for religious worship and study also maintain them as a place for secular activities beneficial to the community as a whole. Even during formal worship services, churches frequently collect the funds used to finance their secular operations and make decisions regarding their nature.
Second, government grants exemptions to religious organizations because they uniquely contribute to the pluralism of American society by their religious activities. Government may properly include religious institutions among the variety of private, nonprofit groups that receive tax exemptions, for each group contributes to the diversity of association, viewpoint, and enterprise essential to a vigorous, pluralistic society. See Washington Ethical Society v. District of Columbia, 101 U. S. App. D. C. 371, 373, 249 F. 2d 127, 129 (1957). To this end, New York extends its exemptions not only to religious and social service organizations but also to scientific, literary, bar, library, patriotic, and historical groups, and generally to institutions “organized exclusively for the moral or mental improvement of men and women.” The very breadth of this scheme of exemptions negates any suggestion that the State intends to single out religious organizations for special preference. The scheme is not designed to inject any religious activity into a nonreligious context, as was the case with school prayers. No particular activity of a religious organization —for example, the propagation of its beliefs—is specially promoted by the exemptions. They merely facilitate the existence of a broad range of private, nonprofit organizations, among them religious groups, by leaving each free to come into existence, then to flourish or wither, without being burdened by real property taxes.
Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York, 397 U.S. 664 (1970), Brennan, J., concurring.
Churches are designed to provide temporal and spiritual support to the people in a community, with an emphasis on the less fortunate in that community. Country clubs are designed to provide fun places to hang out for rich people and their kids.
I admire Jon Huntsman for his philanthropy. His generosity has helped more people than I could ever dream of. This post is not meant to be critical of him, but I wonder why he chose to analogize his church donations to country club dues. The two are not remotely similar. In the context of whether contributions to a church are charitable donations, the comparison to country club dues sounds somewhat stupid and even insulting. It also potentially gives more fodder to the people that want to do away with the tax exempt status of churches.
For example, this disgustingly oblivious change.org petition that has 375 supporters: Petitioning End Church Tax Exempt Status, Faith Based Politics: Religions and churches should pay a fair share:
The money parishioners donate to churches should ethically go to indiscriminately feed the poor and offer low income people healthcare and housing. (isn’t that the true meaning of charity?) It should not go to greedy, hateful and glutenous right wing media houses and fanatical senators to promote their anti woman and anti homosexual religious agendas. LGBT are people and citizens too. Why do homosexuals pay government taxes that in-turn our government gives to a church that is trying to erode the homosexual’s and women’s person-hood and social equality? This is the bait and switch tactic. Clergy use the church and their sad Jesus story allure of religion to entice their followers and the government into believing the church actually cares about the down trodden of society. Then these churches send the money off to their political cronies.
It goes on, and it gets more ranty.
Then there’s this story out of Nebraska from January of this year, where fruitcake Ernie Chambers, who in 2007 filed a lawsuit against God, introduced a bill to do away with the state’s property tax exemption for religious organizations:
Atheist Lawmaker Introduces Bill Ending Church Property Tax Exemption; Says Jesus Would Approve.
So, is Huntsman right?
I know this is old, but I was reflecting on the iconic Peggy Joseph video once again recently and something really bothers me about it.
She seems like she is about to say something that will be poignant and inspiring. She begins by saying it was a touching moment and she never thought she would see this day come. Surely — surely — she will next talk about what it means to her to see an African-American elected president, given how minority races, ethnicities, and religions have been treated in this country for most of our history. Or maybe she will point to her children beside her and say, “Now I can tell them they can grow up to be anything they want to be in this country.”
Something big along those lines.
But no.
She says she experienced her “touching moment” because she’s getting a financial bailout.
Inspiring!
