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Mercy: Worcester-area mom can't bring her kids to the park for fear they might see the gays

She's just not ready to answer her kids' inevitable questions about sodomy:

I can't even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate immorality. We all know what would happen if I asked two men or two women to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they live in sodomy.

Via Towleroad and Wicked Gay Blog.

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Comments

Aside from the usual christian right bullshit (like claiming that abortions are paid for by government funds), sooooomebody spent a little bit too much time reading the Jesus Book and noooooot enough time paying attention in civics class.

Really, there's nothing new: it's the usual arrogance. "If you don't let me force my values on others and control them, you're violating my rights!"

PS:She has your IP address!

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I'm so sensitized to the strangeness in my community that I've developed this ever-present jumpiness whenever I'm in public.

Nuff said.

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I have this desire to get the teehee and zomg cars to drive a couple of times around the park at the appropriate moment.

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:o)

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Can I add the ROFL car to the mix?

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Stacy is TOTALY PARANOID:
Stacy Transacos typed: "Do you think knowing this happened about seven miles from my home makes me afraid to leave the house? You bet it does."
SEVEN MILES in your average American suburb takes almost 15 minutes to drive, including stop signs, red lights & mild traffic. If she's afraid of a crime occurring SEVEN MILES AWAY she needs therapy.
Honestly I feel sad for her children.

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Yes, I know how this woman suffers, for I too was once subject to ridicule for pointing out to a deaf and dumb country the horrible evil in its midst. Oh, the cruel posts to my blog!

respectfully,
"Bud" Eichmann

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Seven children? If she keeps that up, there won't be a place in the state where ANY two people - gay or straight - can hold hands without being in front of one of her family members.

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gee and I bet she home schools them all to 'shield' them. *eye roll*

If she pops out 3 more kids, ONE WILL BE GAY. ("One in Ten" as us gay folks say)

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Excellent point, but your math is wrong--probability is multiplicative, not additive. At a 10% chance per kid, with 7 kids, she's already got a better-than-even (~52%) chance of one of them starting the most awkward coming-out conversation in the history of time.

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"The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

(I don't believe homosexuality is a sin, but even if I did, well, I don't believe in throwing stones.)

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(this is when I wish UHub had a "like" button.)

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n/t

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Rather than Jesus and the Woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11), the Publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14) is the classic proof text against this sort of nonsense.

Sweet and to the point; it confronts the oh-so-common, "I ain't like those wicked people over there" with "God! Be merciful to me, a sinner."

The Lukan passage leaves out the confounding issue of sex—which has got fuck all to do with anything—and focuses squarely on the hypocrisy. Besides, although probably part of the ancient oral tradition, the Woman taken in adultery is conclusively not Johannine; and so, is not the greatest jumping off point for fending off hysteria over teh gayz.

After all, it's not really abortion and in vitro fertilization that's got Stacy's knickers in a twist; it's clear the Two Mommies, with not a man in sight.

Is anyone else struck by irony of "Accepting Abundance" for the blog title?

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Mrs Trasancos original post was nothing but her opinion and while you may not like it, she didn't advocate physically harming anyone in any manner. Further, you left out the part of the story above where Christ tells the woman to "go and sin no more." If we are going to use the Bible to support our positions, then let's use the whole Bible.

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The bible can't even agree with itself. You might not want to open those barn doors so wide.

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There are gay people in Worcester?

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Sigh - our own people are hurting the counter-argument once again. It's never right to wish harm on anyone regardless of if you disagree with them or not. The people wishing death/rape upon her (and/or her children) are no better than she is. As much as we have a right to hold hands in public, she has a right to state her opinion.

With this said, I'd love to see her take my boyfriend on (who is an American Baptist minister, finishing up his M.Div at ANTS) in a real religious debate. There definitely is a way to be gay and live your life by the Book. I'm agnostic, but he's obviously Jesus-crazy and being in this long-term relationship with someone who is religious has opened my eyes to the other side of the fence. I was raised Catholic and their views of religion are so skewed and distorted. It put me (and so many others around the world) off from the church (understandably) because they were telling me I couldn't be who I was. At least now that I'm with him, we regularly engage in debate and teaching (I call them little "Jihads" on the couch) which has helped both of us grow in our spiritual quests. I'm still agnostic (which he respects) and probably always will be, but I have at least learned about and have seen first hand the positive aspects that religion can bring to a community after only seeing the negative shame of the Catholic church for so many years. His goal in life (which was approved by the MA council last month) is to plant a new church in the Boston/Roxbury area for members of the at-risk community of all ages.

I can only hope that when her children grow up, they start to question the hatred they were taught.

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I suggest you stay out of Union Square, Davis Square, or for that matter any other part of Somerville. Or Cambridge. Or the South End. Or Jamaica Plain. Or especially the Fenway.

May your kids grow up to reject your intolerance and embrace the variety of human experience.

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I agree 100% with this mom. The homosexual deviants who took over some of the DCR parks and state rest areas actually had a blog criticizing (by name) the troopers and patrolmen who enforced the state laws that prohibited their conduct. Eventually, the Patrick administration told the cops to look the other way or risk having their career path derailed. What has been done to the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, and the enforcement limits placed on H Troop troopers, is especially dispicable. I heard from a father of four and longtime Boy Scout leader who, after 30 years, can no longer take the kids to the Blue Hills / Trailside Museum due to what is on display in that area. Progressive?

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Gays are our equals because they're just like everybody else: Most of them are good normal folks, and some of them are complete scumbags.

Everybody would be wise to watch the "Death Camp of Tolerance" episode of South Park. It's the last word on gay relations.

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"is on display in that area?" I have hiked in the hills many, many times, on all different trails. And the only thing I have seen on display at the Trailside Museum is a variety of bird species and nice ranger folk who like to talk about them.

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You wouldn't date take children anywhere where they might see two females put their arms around each other? Because that is what this poor, misinformed, brain-addled Catholic lady is whining about when she says that Teh Geyz have taken everything over.

Or are you actually seeing people engage in sexual activities? Then call the police, for pete's sake. No one is saying that is appropriate at all, and if you don't think that heterosexual people do the same thing then I've got a bridge to sell you... Seeing as you've bought into the whole religion thing, it should be an easy sale!

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I'm a frequent hiker in that area, and I've never seen any sort of gay or straight inappropriate sexual behavior.

I'm guessing though that you're not familiar with the '60s and '70s when queer folks were forced by bigots like you to meet up in locations where they couldn't be seen by neighbors, employers, etc?

This isn't that time anymore though, and same-sex couples don't have any higher rates of PDA than different-sex couples. I'd venture to say it's probably less, actually, since every same-sex couple knows they're likely to get kicked out of places, cops called, etc., for the same perfectly legal behavior that straight people do all the time.

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I find it difficult to believe that eeka thinks that cruising public parks is a thing of the past. This isn't that time anymore? Really? Maybe for the married, two dogs crowd, but rest assured, the Blue Hills tradition carries on to this day. I've seen brake lights tapped in the Houghton's Pond lot in the last year. Hint hint.

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Don't forget to tune in next week, when O-FISH-L tackles other great social problems of the day with common-sense application 60-year-old social mores. Tentative schedule of topics: miscegenation and its dilution of the white race; pants with sagging waist-lines; and why his kids never call.

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With his American flag rippling in the breeze, he
will continue to rail against this growing immorality
of our society...

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I hike in Blue Hills all the time - sometimes with my kids, sometimes with my dog - and have never seen anything even remotely untoward.

I also go to the Sheepfold at the Middlesex Fells - it's one of the few legit off-leash dog areas around - and there's also an area near the parking lot, where a lot of guys hang around apparently looking for anonymous gay sex. I don't find the whole scene particularly savory, but I've known ever since I was a kid that the guys at cruising spots are looking for like-minded folks, and not interested in bothering anyone else. My son, on seeing some of the guys popping in and out of the woods to check each other out, laughed and remarked, "well, there's a vivid image to go with the definition of the verb, 'to lurk'." Hardly an emotionally or morally scarring moment.

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Ask anyone in those cruising areas if they're gay and I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that 8 out of 10 of them will say no (and mean it). Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if 10 out of 10 said no and that the majority of them had wives and/or children at home.

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on her blog are absolutely disgusting! They make the gay community look worse than the crazy Christian community! And because of that, in an odd way, it looks like she's winning...

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we can't judge a whole demographic by a few blog comments.

Yes, there are obnoxious comments from both sides on that blog. But those shouldn't represent members of either community who have not commented on that blog.

And may I remind everyone that there are plenty of gay Christians.

(There are also a few notorious and very bored groups of homophobes in the Boston area who troll blogs, pretending to be queer folks, leaving really obnoxious comments to make people think that this is normal queer-folk behavior or something).

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Thanks for pointing that out. That hadn't crossed my mind and it makes much more sense than someone actually saying they hope someone's child gets raped.

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http://whyimcatholic.com/index.php/conversion-stor...

read her story, miss judgey pants was three times a pregnant bride.

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What a messs that woman is. Self help converts are usually over the top. All that therapy and not a lick of self reflection.

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How do people effeminately rub elbows? Not to take the exchange of doe eyes too literally, what is wrong if two people are so infatuated with each other that they would directly look at each other without fear of shame? Perhaps for all of her prowess at producing offspring she envies the terrible gays who are actually happy with each other?

I wonder why she is afraid of her kids asking questions about a child with two mommies. The answer is simple. The two women love each other just like mommy loves daddy. What's so difficult with that?

If the moral judgement, pretense to superiority and attempt to conflate her personal discomfort with tabloid factoids were removed she would have very little to write.

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"Rubbing elbows" is the same idiom as "rubbing shoulders"...basically standing closely, like in meet'n'greets where you "rubbed shoulders with the CEO"...except this time, effeminately and with doe eyes.

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Geez. Whine some more about how parenting involves answering questions you may not want to. These kooks always cloak their own insecurities in "it's for the children". By the way, how does someone with 7 kids have time to write a blog?

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Did you read her bio? Former wild-child, she converted to Catholicism as an adult. I'm not surprised. In my experience, the later you come to Catholicism, and the more out-of-control living you have in your history (you know, the exact same thing you're railing against as immoral now,) the more zealous you are about religion later in life.

Either that, or she's worried that she or her husband or one of her kids is gay, and by force feeding all this "morality" down their throats, she can squelch any kind of homosexual feelings. I've seen that happen, too.

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was at the old Boston Flea Market that was at Faneuil Hall before it became the tourist trap it is today. I was about 8 or 9 at the time.

Me: Pop, why are those two guys kissing?

Pop: They're very good friends.

Me: But I don't kiss Kenny that way (Kenny was my best friend)

Pop: Well, they're friends like you and Kenny, but in a different way.

Me: Different how?

Pop: Well, they're special people and that's how special people kiss.

Me: You mean, special like retards?

The old man never gets tired of telling that story...

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when I was little I asked my parents what "gay" meant and they were like "it's when two boys or two girls love each other" and then the only thing I was ever confused about on the issue was what the hell "Deck the Halls" was about.

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This thread is not going to end well...

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I feel for this woman and her family. It's entirely understandable that she hate being around gays and having them express themselves in her children's presence. You all are missing the bigger picture here:

She's Catholic and all the gays she's ever actually known have been child-raping priests.

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(So glad I wasn't taking a drink when I read that last line. Kaz would have owed me a new keyboard. :) )

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The vast majority of your "child raping priests" (as is the vast majority of rapists in general) are heterosexual men.

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Way to prove'em wrong, "Peppy".

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married decades to the same, sigh, woman (and - I've complained about this before - they PROMISED me gay marriage would destroy mine, and I'm still waiting, but my patience is wearing thin; let's step it up, churchies). I've never lived in sodomy but I've, uh, been on vacation there a few times, and, um, that's part of why I don't have to "accept abundance," ifyaknowwhaddimean, nudge, wink.

Were it up to me, I'd shield my children's eyes from people wearing white shoes after Labor Day, from synthetic fibers, from Australian critter wines, and maybe from those barbed-wire tattoos. No kids should have to see people living in tacky right out there in the public parks. But sometimes you gotta let go and allow them to build up their own calluses, I guess.

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The same people who say I shouldn't impose my sanity on them, are imposing insanity on me and my children to the point that I literally have a hard time even leaving my home anymore to do something as simple as visit the park. And this is freedom?

I am an atheist stay-at-home father of two, and I live in the state of Massachusetts where "Catholicism" has been legal for hundreds of years and it's just one aspect of the larger religious agenda. Because we have only two children, it takes little effort to go anywhere. We have only filled our hybrid with gasoline twice this entire summer vacation. We go around Mass. and we go two miles up the road to a small outdoor swimming pool. That's pretty much it.

At the pool this summer there were Catholic couples with children and, while I was polite as my own young son doted on the baby with two "fundies", I also held my breath in anticipation of awkward questions - questions I'm not ready to answer. My young sons are both under the age of eight and they are not old enough to understand why a baby would have two parents calling themselves "Catholics".

When there was a priest and a boy relaxing at the side of the pool unnaturally close to each other, effeminately rubbing elbows and exchanging doe-eyes, I was again anxiously watching my children hoping they wouldn't ask questions. They don't see Daddy do that with anyone but Mommy. We haven't been back to the pool for a couple of weeks, except once but it rained. The truth is, now I don't really want to go back.

So what am I harping about?

Today we decided to go to the park. We live near a nice park that is safe, clean and quiet. My sons were in the sandbox, one on the slide, and as I lifted the baby out of his stroller I looked up to see four women laughing at a baby boy as he was swinging in one of those bucket baby swings. That seems harmless enough, but I'm so sensitized to the strangeness in my community that I've developed this ever-present jumpiness whenever I'm in public. Sure enough, two of the women, so happy to see a baby boy laughing, pulled out a set of rosary beads and started chanting.

This is my community. I find myself unable to even leave the house anymore without worrying about what in tarnation we are going to encounter. We are responsible citizens. We live by the rules, we pay our taxes, we take care of our things. I'm supposed to be able to influence what goes on in my community, and as a voter I do exercise that right. But I'm outnumbered. I can't even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate Christianity. We all know what would happen if I asked any two people to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they believe in God.

So now I go on a rant.

Our taxes are being used to fund religious school vouchers, "faith-based initiatives", and tax-free mega-churches already. That offends me in ways that are inexpressible. I read this August in the Wall Street Journal how preachers are allowed to own multiple homes worth over $400,000 in real estate under the "parsonage allowance". Let me guess? I shouldn't offend them though, right? And what's next at the park? Public Islamic praying to Allah? No joke. These things are not isolated, it is all the same issue at the fundamentalist level. We're being pushed to accept religion and it's not just on TV and in Washington D.C. It's right in front of us too.

We fund a lot of religious nuts here and helping people who really need help is not something I'd ever oppose. But it's still haunting me that just this week I learned of religious nuts who killed their child by spanking her to death. The couple was so religious they didn't notice when they hit their 7-year old child that her kidneys stopped functioning from all of the broken muscle tissue and she stopped breathing. When they finally did stop, another child, an 11-year old, was still alive but in critical condition. They're charged with murder and torture. They had 7 other kids in the house with them.

Do you think knowing this happened by Christians makes me afraid to leave the house? You bet it does. But that just adds to everything else I'm being asked to tolerate. Seriously, is this freedom?

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Kaz, this is, by far, the best thing I have seen in weeks. Period. Better than kittens and rainbows and ponies that fart rainbow kittens.

Awesome. Just... Awesome.

If you haven't already, I hope you post that directly to her blog.

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The post is old enough (or she got tired of the comments) that she's not taking new comments on it.

So, I notified her of my post here via Twitter.

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Evidently I touched a nerve. So, she side-steps the facts of my post and its relevance as a tool to show the ill-guided conclusions that she drew in her original text. Instead, she takes the easy way out and goes for the idea that "all of her Catholic friends won't bash me the way all the atheists torched her...so you see, Catholics are good and atheists aren't".

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After the president of the Americans Atheists group made an appearance on Fox News, I understand Fox had a hard time keeping up with the death treats on their Facebook page.

Let us know when the first death threat shows up in your email box Kaz. I bet it won't be long.

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I've been unsure about you in the past Kaz, but now I think I love you.

I had a bad case of childhood Catholicism, but I recovered and am now a happy atheist. I try to shield my children from it, but I do still really like shiny things, that nun movie with Audrey Hepburn and Christmas. So when we had kids, we decided to present the Christmas story as part of our celebration, but in a cultural anthropology kind of way, devoid of any references to a deity and sparing the traditional gynecological details. We even got a sweet, brightly-painted kids' nativity set. The whole cast of characters looked happy beneath our tree without the look of worried flatulence that most nativity figures have.

I felt like we had navigated Christmas successfully with our 2-year-old until a few weeks later at a kids' party in a neighborhood church hall we walked smack into a larger-than-life suffering crucifix that could have come out of a Sam Peckinpah movie. I was raised Catholic, but I never really thought about it before. What do you say to your toddler when they're confronted with the kind of gore you would never allow a teenager to see in a video game or a movie? "Remember that cute little baby from Christmas honey..."

Really Stacy, I live in the North End and I find myself unable to even leave the house anymore. St. Lucy's statue has a bowl of eyeballs, St. Agatha's got her breasts on a plate, St. Denis is carrying his own decapitated head. Are these hostess gifts for some sick dinner party you people are hosting in the afterlife?

But maybe we're being too hard on you Stace. It's hard raising kids and it must be hard to find rainy day activities that are dogmatically suitable. Just so there's no hard feelings, here are some entertaining christian lego projects for the kids to work on while you're stuck in the house waiting for the rapture.

http://www.inspirationalchristians.org/just-for-fu...

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This comment is perfect.

I'm an ex-Catholic myself who grew up in the south, and I am not remotely exaggerating when I say religious fundamentalists scare the shit out of me. I got so much crap in high school for not being "saved" or "Christian" or any of that, and a "friend" actually tricked me into going to a good old fashioned Southern Baptist tent revival to try and get me "saved."

And with so many people in government trying to push their own warped version of "Christian morality" on the rest of us...yeah, I'm really over it.

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Very witty kaz. BTW the hyphen you jammed into the word "turnaround" is totally superfluous. Public school education?

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If you're going to criticize my education, spelling, or grammar, then the least you can do is quote me correctly. I said "turn-about" not "turn-around".

Also, superfluous means unnecessary, not incorrect...so what's your point? There are three acceptable forms of "turn-about" (turnabout, turn-about, turn about). I used one of them. Why the implicit derogatory attack on a public school education? I had one and it seems that I have a leg up on you at the very least.

You also forgot to capitalize a proper noun (Kaz).

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The Intolerant One made a blog post in reply to Kaz's post.

http://www.acceptingabundance.com/2011/09/atheist-...

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I commented on her new thread, to demonstrate that it is easy enough to condemn her instead of Kaz, but as far as I can tell, nobody noticed.

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They found their favorite whipping boy of the day in another poster. They find him easier to discuss/debunk/debate/deride. It's how these things work. Just as you noted, she didn't deal with the substance of my logic substitution on her tautology. It's pretty clear that my replacements make the whole thing less sensible and thus her tautology doesn't have internal consistency. The true method for using logical substitution is to determine the internal consistency...she instead wanted to extrapolate to what *others* will say about my post versus hers. She even goes so far as to potentially influence what they say (who's going to tell me that I'm going to hell for posting that after she's so deftly claimed up front that "*none* of the Catholics would ever do *that*!"?)

But instead they chose to pick on probably the most absurd part of my parable where I have a priest (in frock assumedly) molesting a boy by the pool. And they chose to comment on someone who wants to pick an argument with them rather than discuss how they so intentionally avoided the real discussion on whether her initial comment is proven absurd by my satire of it. It's how you operate when you know you're going to be yelling into an echo chamber and you want to be sure that everyone's on the same page.

You take the simplest, smallest part of the discussion (or even make up something that wasn't presented in the first place). Blow it up huge as if it was the defining thesis of the entire comment. Destroy it to oblivion while everyone agrees with your assessment. Then, sit back in smug satisfaction that your internal monologue is actually a dialogue and you're on the "right" side of the argument being had. This is what public discourse has devolved into as aided by our every increasingly segregated society egged on by the internet.

But I did enjoy your comment on her blog and felt it was spot on.

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