More lives fall to religion, more Americans fall to idiocy.

First of all, let me just say that I can't believe that I'm writing about this. It seemed from the get-go like a simple matter of complete lack of common sense. A couple of parents who should've been stripped of their right to bear children. But in what I can only describe as a real asshole move, the country just can't seem to tip back from the point of insanity we're dangerously close to reaching.

If you haven't heard of the story by now, here it is: In Wausau, Wisconsin, an 11-year-old girl had diabetes, and it killed her. A similar thing recently happened in Oregon, this time it was pneumonia. The reason this is such an outrage is because no one realized she had it. For "religious reasons," her parents had not given her any medical attention since she was 3 years old, deciding instead that a divine course of action would be more suitable: praying.

At this point, I thought that everyone would have the tiny bit of intelligence it would take to realize that her parents are horrible human beings, and that the tragedy here was that some illness had not claimed them before this happened. They are, after all, the ones who made this choice, paying for it in other lives, not their own.

I was wrong, however, and I heard on a conservative christian radio show the host casually brush this off, proclaiming that "of course the parents shouldn't be charged" with anything. He then went on to try to find a way to show that the police should not have intervened in a religious compound in Texas, where a 16-year-old girl was allegedly sexually abused and impregnated by a man more than 3 times her age.

To illustrate what the reaction has been from the moron point of view, here are some comments I have heard or read:

from an anonymous dope,
"In this context and based on the parents beliefs, neglect could only be attributed IF the parents were NOT praying for their child. Under their expression of faith they were perfectly caring and supportive of their child's health. YOU don't have the right to call them neglectful. I think it is wrong what they did and that this is a tragedy, but I am not about to assume that what they have been through was easy. Imagine their pain and sense of loss, imagine how their faith is being tried right now. Imagine how they must feel isolated and persecuted in their own country?"


from a reverend,
"it's easy to judge a family for doing this or not doing that, but the bottom line is, they did what's best in their heart, and the result turned out to be bad."

from the POLICE who investigated this!
"There is no reason to remove [the other children]. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see."

It seems to me that DEATH is abuse enough to make an effort to protect the older children. There's no reason why the parents would single this girl out to fend for herself, is there?

Anyway, a forum where this was posted at www.indymoms.com (make your judgments before proceeding), left me flabbergasted. Many of the responses said that although personally, the reader was appalled at what happened and thought the parents were stupid, we should not charge them, and we should respect their beliefs. I don't care if God lived down the block from me, when you're beliefs start killing people, fuck respect.

And to top off the night, getting back to the radio show I was angry at, a caller (who I will define as a practicing atheist) said, "You know, uh, I'm not a practicing christian or anything, but uh, that thing about praying to make people better... you know, there might be something to that."

I trust that you'll be able to generate your own outrage based on those half-wits' comments, and move on. Keep in mind that two of these have recently made national headlines. I'm sure many more go on unreported. Then we had the sexual abuse in Texas, which was handled properly by police, thankfully. No charges have been filed in this Wisconsin case, but I sure hope they are soon. If you know of a murder, but don't try to stop it or inform police, you're an accessory. If you find out even after it's done, and don't inform police, you're an accessory. But there's a chance that it's possible to stop every force that could save your daughter's life, and instead watch her wither away in your own home without telling anyone, and be completely innocent? I don't think so.

I wonder what people would say if I took a relative off life support without telling anyone, and prayed for them to survive anyway? There is discussion of what kinds of constitutional issues are involved, but I don't think it's that complicated. I had this crazy idea in my head that I had rights, and I was the only one who could wave them. What was that one right? The inalienable one? Oh yeah: LIFE. If we've decided as a country that our rights can be taken away by other people who aren't punished for it - people who are forgiven purely because they're ignorant rubes without the slightest capability for logical thinking left in their bodies, then I swear...

I'm going to go live with the socialist, Godless, Euro-weasels.

I'll plagiarize now a Christopher Hitchens line, that he used when speaking about the late buffoon Jerry Falwell: "I'm sorry there's no hell for her parents to go to."