CAAP, William Owens, Alveda King and distorting the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Bible

May 25, 2012 / Posted in  Black Americans, Christian Terrorists, Homosexuality, Iowa, Jesus Christ, Robert Vander Plaats, separation of church and state

The Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP) President William Owens, a congenital liar, has a long and sordid history of being against anything but his private interests. Owens a graduate of Tennessee State University where he received a degree in Education, briefly studied law at Texas Southern University, then went on to Oral Roberts University to study theology but has no training in biblical exegesis or any biblical language, and ultimately received a Master of Education from Christian Brothers University of May 14, 2004.  His biography claims that he supports “Christ-centered values” [sic; he missed Matthew 22:37-39, among others] but has nothing in common with the teaching of the New Testament Jesus.  The theocrat tartly rejects the message of the New Testament Jesus (Matthew 7:1, and John 8:1-11) who, it is printed, ate with “sinners” (tax collectors) and was known as a common glutton and drunkard (Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34) daily.

Owens role as a “pastor” [sic] is equal to me being a carpenter as I do own a hammer. (Read: Sherry, Alissa; Aldeman, Andrew; Whilde, Margaret R; and Quick, Daniel (2010). “Competing selves: Negotiating the intersection of spiritual and “sexual identities.” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol. 41(2), Apr 112-119; doi: 10.1037/a0017471).  Owens released to the news media that CAAP had called on President Obama to withdraw his “support” for same-sex marriages.  As is always the case with Owens, it was a lie.  The media has reported that “more than a dozen pastors … [meeting] in Memphis, TN” called out the President for his stand.  The majority of other CAAP pastors declared their support for Obama.  For example, Dr. Brad Braxton the founding pastor of The Open Church in Baltimore, Maryland, and feels homosexual unions are “an endorsement of God’s eternal devotion to abundant life and holy love.”

In an op-ed published in Wednesday’s edition of The Washington Post, Braxton described his support of the president and the issue. “The door leading to godly truth often swings on the hinges of social diversity,” wrote Braxton. “Even the Bible was the result of complex debates spanning thousands of years and involving many languages, diverse cultures, and a host of political decisions about which books to admit and omit. The plurality of voices in scripture reveals a clear biblical message – sacred truth demands diverse perspectives”.

William Owens has done nothing to advance the rights of Black women. He remains, like Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece, an outspoken hate-monger (many of his sermons read similar to the ranting of Adolf Hitler) and pathological liar.  Neither he nor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s’ niece has any inkling of the Jesus of the New Testament (they ignore Matthew 7:1 (Μὴ κρίνετε, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτ· cp. Luke 6:37) and Acts 10:34: Ἀνοίξας δὲ Πέτρος τὸ στόμα εἶπεν· ἐπ’ ἀληθείας καταλαμβάνομαι ὅτι οὖκ ἔστιν προσωπολήμπτης ὁ θεός,), and worse, lie that Jesus was opposed to gay marriages–but there is not one word in the Bible to support their crude and linguistically fallacious distortions of what scrolls say. 

William Owens ignores that Jesus never had a girl friend.  Jesus never married. Jesus lived only with men, and only one was married: Peter, but he was estranged or separated from his wife (Matthew 8:14: Καὶ ἐλθὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν Πέτρου εἶδεν τὴν πενθερὰν αὐτοῦ βεβλημένην καὶ πυρέσσουσαν·; St. Jerome, Epistle xliii. Chap. ii. ad Julianum, and lib. i. adv. Jovin.), and the apostle (Peter) exchanged a final kiss (osculum pacis) with Saul of Tarsus, according to legend, as each was led to their crucifixion. 

Jesus let a man (John the Beloved) sleep on his chest (John 13:23), and, as he left the Garden a naked youth followed him (Mark 14:51-52: καὶ νεανίσκος τις συνηκολούθει αὐτῷ περιβεβλημένος σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνοῦ, καὶ κρατοῦσιν αὐτόν· 52 ὁ δὲ καταλιπὼν τὴν σινδόνα γυμνὸς ἔφυγεν. ) to where Judas waited to kiss him (the Greek word is passionately kissed.  Both Matthew (26:47–50) and Mark (14:43–45) use the Greek verb kataphilein, which means to kiss firmly, intensely, passionately, tenderly or warmly).  The issue of the teenager (young boy) being naked is startling to most pastors today, but

was a common occurance among secret sects that met away from the city where magicians created an entire body of rituals and literature that was forerunners of a Last Day and a Final Judgment following an apocalypse.  The apocalypse, however, was not a distortion nor a destruction of the earth and its people, but rather a cleanings and retoration of life where everyone became young again and had a second chance.  That is the reason that the youth left his linen cloth behind and fled awake naked (not nude, as nude implies statuary or natural reality, while naked is intended to arouse passion to begin a new life).   The one who led the group, or instructed neophytes in prayer, was given the title of Christ (it is not a name; it means lead magi[ician] or “anointed one” and comes from ancient Egypt as early as 300 BCE).

The Christ cup, as it is known today, was unique.  It was used in mystery religions and had a separate sect complete with doctrine.  It is the earliest exponent of white magic. This illustration is engraved with the words dia chrstou o goistais that have been adequately translated by the excavation team as “through christ the magician [we gain eternal life.”  The cup had special properties: water could be changed into wine, and wine changed into the blood of a foretold savior that would be hung from a tree to redeem the faithful.  The most fascinating aspect of this cup is the issue of a magicial that 2 Timothy 3:13 considers to be conjurers or evil men–because they relied on formulae rather than faith. Formulae was concrete, while faith was too mystical for most to understand and they preferred warlocks and sorcerers rather than priests who merely talked.

Matthew 26:48 is equal to 2 Samuel 20:9. The Kiss was a silent statement that “the hour is at hand for the messiah (warrior) to come and free Israel.” Only the authors of the Gospel according to Luke condemns the kiss as a betrayal.  The Gospel of John says nothing at all about the kiss. 

Many scholars consider the story of the Kiss to be invented and added at a later date; it came from the description by Plutarch of what would become the famous kiss that Alexander the Great gave Bagoas: Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Alexander, 67. Bagoas was a eunuch in the old Persian Empire (4^th century BCE), who became the Eromenos (Beloved: the prototype for John the Beloved) of Alexander the Great whose fame, in part, is adopted into the Gospel narrative) that Jesus did not refuse. 

To argue that William Owens who claims that there were no LGBT marchers with Martin Luther King  is a hypocrite is an understatement that even Dr. Martin Luther King’s wife, Corretta, denied.  There were sizeable numbers of gays and lesbians who fought for civil rights for Black people, and a gay man (Bayard Rustin) led the 1963 march (watch here and here). Owens’ ever-escalating lies are an insult to all Blacks in the USA.

William Owens must resign.  He twists, distorts and transmogrifies the words of the Bible that his congregation reads in ignorance. Owens represents suppression, rejection of full civil rights for all people, and he tarnishes Martin Luther King’s memory.  Black pastors throughout the NAACP have endorsed same-sex marriages.

The unjustified academic arrogance and contrived ignorance of William Owens can be seen in the increasing number of LGBT members in the choirs of Black churches, and many of the black pastors have been engaged in homosexual behavior either covertly or overtly (I was sexually molested at the age of ten by a Black Pentecostal pastor at the Cedar River (Cedar Falls, Iowa) Bible camp ground, and cautioned against saying anything).  I later learned later that the pastors leading retreats were regularly seducing young boys and afterwards condemning homosexuality as a perversion and sin that the child initiated.  Some were denounced from makeshift pulpits by name; others by a finger pointed at the youth, but given our age and lack of knowledge of sex, none of us said a thing to anyone.  Even more graphic is the fact that many gays and lesbians in black churches are commonly in leadership positions and hold the pastors of the CAAP in open contempt.

The Coalition of African-American Pastors is a small group, but vocal. Few of the most rabid pastors have any substantive education, and all read only the English Bible. 

Illiteracy of scripture is high within the group.  Most take a literal translation of allegories and parables in the Bible as if they were true, and depend upon donations and tithes to keep their churches afloat–many in warehouses, deserted strip mall shops and even their homes–but some large donations do appear–from politicians, especially within the Republican Party.  They have the support of the Tea Party and radical Republicans such as Michele Bachmann.

Many in the CAAP are for young, inexperienced, undereducated and poorly read. Major thinkers, writers, speakers, and educations who are black (and many are gay or lesbian), such as James Baldwin, reject the CAAP as a neo-fascist group of ignorant clerics intent on keeping poor people subject to their ministry (read here, watch here) in the same way as Torquemada of Spain used the rack, whip, and death to keep Roman Catholics inline and obedient.  Like many social conservatives and evangelical extremists, they are against science, argue that their particular Bibles are the only source of authority, and demand unquestioning obedience, exhibiting the rejection of reason, inquiry and analysis that has been presented by the American Sociological Association, “Study: Conservatives’ Trust in Science Has Fallen Dramatically Since Mid-1970s (read: “Trust in Science Has Also Declined Among People Who Frequently Attend Church” (an abridged edition), March 29, 2012; the full text is available from the American Sociological Association).

Christian terrorists organizations such as many groups within the CAAP and Southern Baptist Association are bombarding legislatures to pass creationism (Intelligent Design) legislation mandating the teaching of mythology in classrooms—and driving academically students away from their states in quest of serious academic inquiry, as with Zack Kopplin of Louisiana, and others (watch, read here and here).  They are willing to take on the most ignorant members of the US Congress, such as Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), Steven King (R-NY), Charles Grassley (R-IA), and others.

The most barbaric and über-religiösen state in the USA where education is a bad joke is Tennessee.  In Tennessee, schools are more like drop-out factories than centers for education given the state legislature’s hostility to the conduct of inquiry and investigation. Even words are prohibited that Tennessee’s poorly educated legislature has thrown against students and scholars, driving the best of both out of the state and its embrace of the Dark Ages in learning (read here and here). 

In Tennessee that initiated the infamous Monkey Trial in an effort to discredit Charles Darwin’s discoveries and thesis, Louisiana, and other Bible Belt states students are required to accept the fantasy of Genesis over science, that is more ignorant than the re-emerging cadre of people who believe the planet Earth is flat (read here and is based on biblical literalism: Isaiah 40:22, 44:24-28; Genesis 1:10,16-18 (written after Isaiah); Psalms 136:7-9; Proverbs 8:27; and Luke 4:5).

The biggest blackguard beguiler who has the faintest marginal knowledge, at best, of the Bible, is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King.  With  a history of distorting her uncle’s message, the outspoken and extremely anti-gay Alveda King, in a carefully worded statement, attacked the NAACP today for their decision to publicly support same-sex marriage this weekend.  Her common comment is the greatest lie that this parched pedantic pathetic pathological patchily preaches.  As the Christian Newswire reported Alveda C. King, founder of King for America and Pastoral Associate for Priests for Life: “Neither my great-grandfather an NAACP founder, my grandfather Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. an NAACP leader, my father Rev. A. D. Williams King, nor my uncle Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embraced the homosexual agenda [sic] that the current NAACP is attempting to label as a civil rights agenda,” said distorting facts, lying about what her ancestors did, and creating blind hatred to hide her own private life.

Alveda C. King’s hypocrisy is equal to the predatory Keith Ratliff of Iowa and other congenital liars who pound their pulpits preaching against sex and, yet many engage in it illicitly.  This is equal to King’s own lifestyle.  Aveda, a self-acknowledged alcoholic who has had two abortions has been married and divorced three times (read here and here and watch here), nearly matching the  record of Georgia’s former House speaker Newt Gingrich who demanded that Bill Clinton step down because of an affair with the intern Monica Lewinski, while Gingrich was regularly engaged in an adulterous affair with his current wife while working for the House.   

Alveda C. King’s brazen lie was openly rejected by her aunt, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr., who declared: Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma (March 21, 1965), in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. … Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.”

Alveda, whose own sexual escapades are not yet fully chronicled (she is a serial adulteress),  has made the statements in conjunction with other African-American leaders, with whom, conveniently, she co-authored a book with Pastor Stephen Broden, Pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Dallas, TX and Pastor Day Gardner, about the anti-abortion and anti-gay  marriage movements,  titled, Life At All Costs and has fought for decades to exclude the battle of LGBT rights from the civil rights movement even though Julian Bond, who marched with King and is Chairman Emeritus of the NAACP and a close friend of the martyred civil rights leader has supported marriage equality as a civil rights for a long time, and he is Black and he is gay and he marched with nearly 1000 other LGBT people.  The NAACP has officially endorsed same-sex marriage as a basic civil right.

A pathological prevaricator, Alveda King is equates same-sex marriage to genocide, and, like the Dominican Preachers and priests who served as Spain’s Inquisition’s torturers, equates abortion with genocide.  A woman who glories in exaggeration and pretense speaks as if she had legitimate credentials, using a spurious honorary doctorate as if it were earned—that at first she claimed she had no knowledge why she was given the degree.

Alveda King received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism, a Master of Arts degree in business management from Central Michigan University. She received an honorary doctorate from Saint Anselm College (she uses the honorary doctorate as a title, and yet has no education to support it being tantamount to me claiming that I am a plumber as I own a screw driver), has no formal training in theology or the bible, does not know Greek, Hebrew, Latin or any biblical language and is illiterate on what the bible really says, reading only bad English translations that were completed by lawyers and pseudo-scholars.  

An avowed racist (Alveda endorsed Herman Cain “because he is black” and Cain, himself, admitted that he is a racist and has no time for white people), Alveda King represents none of the grandeur or messages of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rejected race as a criteria for any civil or human right, unlike his neice who has openly defined race as a priority in her personal stand that matches that of the women supporters of the government of Germany 1939-1945.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow, Corretta King has repeatedly rejected Alveda’s claim and stated unequivocally that her husband and founder of the civil rights movement supported LBGT rights as did his wife when she spoke at the 1996, Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Pride Festival in Piedmont Park.  Mrs. King, exposing the lie of her niece, declared, “I believe all Americans who believe in freedom,

tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation” (read here and here).   

Corretta Scott King noted in 2003, “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people… But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King’s Jr.’s dream, to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people” (read here and here and here). 

Alveda King is a disgrace not only to her race but to humanity.  Her words constitute crimes against human for which she must be held responsible and shunned by those who love liberty, democracy, and freedom for all.  All current psychological studies show that those who speak with the greatest homophobia, denouncing gays and lesbians and equality for the LGBT community are in fact covert homosexuals. Given all evidence available, it is more than probable that Alveda C. King is a lesbian and is in terror of being discovered as a lesbian. As Netta Weinstein, the study’s lead author said in an interview (read the article here; it includes a video of the findings): “Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same-sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves.” In the same release, study co-author Richard Ryan added, “In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward.”  (Weinstein, Netta; Ryan, William S.; DeHaan, Cody R.; Przybylski, Andrew K.; Legate, Nicole; Ryan, Richard M. (2012). “Parental autonomy support and discrepancies between implicit and explicit sexual identities: Dynamics of self-acceptance and defense.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 102(4), Apr 2012, 815-832. doi: 10.1037/a0026854) This theory that has been repeatedly tested and verified revelation by the American Psychological Association and other mental health experts best expresses the mental malaise of Keith Ratliff of Des Moines, Iowa, members of CAAP and NAACP president of the Iowa-Nebraska chapter; he is “mulling” on leaving the NAACP.  It does explain the mincing marginalizing messages massaged by Alveda King and other hate-mongers.  

Rational, democracy defending USA citizens will denounce the vile vicarates of a few within CAAP and odious opportunists riding in the baggage of serial sexist Alveda King as she decries LGBTs who are in a committed loving long-term relationship she has never enjoyed.  Both Ratliff and King show signs of  mentally illness, their hatred overflowing, clouding the perceptions and ontologies of others. Their undisguised disgust and demonic attitude toward others with whom they do not agree, or whom they feel are “imperfect” as defined by Adolf Hitler and other demigods especially within evangelical extremists religions pose a threat to the families, congregations, communities, and democracy as a whole (read: Elion, Audrey A.; Wang, Kenneth T.; Slaney, Robert B.; French, Bryana H. (2012). “Perfectionism in African-American students: Relationship to racial identity, GPA, self-esteem, and depression,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Vol. 18(2), Apr 2012, 118-127).  Owens, King, Ratliff and similar fawning sycophants knowledge of scripture is marginal, their hatred overwhelming, and their membership in the CAAP is tantamount to Christian terrorists who would assassinate LGBT people because of their own psychopathological dysfunction (cp. Gold, Sari D.; Feinstein, Brian A.; Skidmore, W. Christopher; Marx, Brian P. (2011). “Childhood physical abuse, internalized homophobia, and experiential avoidance among lesbians and gay men,” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, in Journal of the American Psychological Association Vol. 3(1), Mar, 50-60. doi: 10.1037/a0020487).

Like other “pastors” in CAAP, Keith Ratliff Sr. has no substantive education. He is unqualified and unfit to either preach or teach his Bible.  Ratliff, however, digs deep into Tea Party and Republican coffers to further his messages of hate, and stands with the most illiterate Iowans in toiling to repeal equal justice under the law.  Equality is, according to Ratliff, only available to those who follow “god’s instructions that marriage is one man plus one woman”–while ignoring the fact that Jacob married his two cousins, Abram sold off his sister who was also his wife to three kings, Solomon had 700 wives and over 300 concubines, and so forth. Ratliff’s knowledge of the Bible is selective to non-existent.

Ratliff Sr.’s education includes a bachelor’s degree (without distinction) in history/education from Simpson College (a private college located at Indianola, Iowa, and is affiliated with the United Methodist Church).  He has a Master’s degree in religious leaderships from Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa; it is a private university affiliated with the Disciples of Christ church) with a “focus” on education.  Ratliff is not listed among its “distinguished alumni”.  There were, when he was a student, and even today, questions not so much about his academic skills (they are not spectacular) but his private life, with many noting that he had no interest in equality for all people–unlike the Jesus of the New Testament that he claims he believes existed.

Ratliff  has targeted unwed mothers, the LGBT community, and Blacks who “melt [sic] into the white community, denying their Blackness [sic].”  His prowess with the English language are diminishing and nearly equal to Iowa State legislator Annette Sweeney who, in her official biography, does not remember that proper nouns, such as the name of a language, begins with a capital letter.

When the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP branch took a vote on recognizing same-sex marriages, it passed overwhelmingly.  There were only two opposing votes. One was that cast by Ratliff who dispenses hate messages to his congregation at the Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines, Iowa. 

Maple Missionary Baptist Church is the total rejection of the life, ministry and mission of the New Testament Jesus.  Jesus, according to the gospels, had no pillow for his head (Matthew 8:20), stole grain from a field to eat (Matthew 12:1), and because of his group of men were in abject poverty (2 Corinthians 8:9), the thirteen had a common purse (John 13:29-38). Ratliff’s life is one of ease, without care or poverty and has never experienced the life he claims to preach about the New Testament Jesus.

Ratliff’s hatred is nearly as intense as the mindless malevolence of Bob Vander Plaats, who, together, still labor to overturn same-sex marriages in the State of Iowa.  Ratliff was the first to condemn the Iowa State Supreme Court’s 2009 unanimous ruling legalizing gay nuptials, spewing venom at the state capital at a rally of Iowa KKK, neo-Nazis, and fanatical fundamentalists many of whom believe that their god wrote their bible on a computer.  The rally had been organized by the Iowa Family Policy Center,  that would merge into zealot Bob Vander Plaats profit producing The FAMiLY Leader (read here and here).  The FAMiLY leader traces its roots to the gynophobia and misogynism of Saul of Tarsus but in many ways reflect the polygamous preaching of Joseph Smith and his cult of Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints); read here and here.  Women are to be subject to men, and children are to be educated from his cult’s bible.  Vander Plaats does control evangelical extremists in much the same manner as Goebbels did in Nazi Germany, and uses contributions to back conservative politicians and demanding that they follow his divinely revealed concepts on government that he claims are found in his bible (read here and here and here and here).

Vander Plaats, like Owens, King, and Ratliff, is marginally educated. On his vita, Vander Plaats records that he attended Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, on a basketball scholarship, and graduated to become a coach and teacher in Boone (a strong KKK hold) and Jefferson, Iowa.  He later took a Master’s and Specialist degree in Educational Leadership from Drake University in Des Moines. 

Vander Plaats left the academic world early and concentrated on building an Old Testament family cult, and financed it by collecting “free-will offerings” (he was never ordained) and quickly surrounded himself with controversy: running as a theocrat on the Republican Party for governor, and later offering to sell his endorsement to his followers for the one-time US Senator Rick Santorum  whom had created a storm when he revealed he took home a twenty week old dead fetus (at twenty weeks it was a fetus, not a baby as the Roman Catholic sometime-Pennsylvanian and his wife Karen claimed) for his children to kiss and play with before the fetus was buried the next day. The fetus, named Gabriel Michael (after two archangels) lived two hours outside of the womb, but Rick, out of touch with reality, referred to him as “my little guy” (consider: Goldenberg, Jamie L.; Pyszczynski, Tom; Greenberg, Jeff; Solomon, Sheldon; Kluck, Benjamin; Cornwell, Robin (2001).  “I am not an animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness.”  Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 130(3), Sep 2001, 427-435. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.130.3.427; and, Pyszczynski, Tom; Greenberg, Jeff; Solomon, Sheldon (1999). “A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory.” Psychological Review, Vol. 106(4), Oct 1999, 835-845; in a similar mode, although this article deals with denial of the loss of a husband, the criteria applies also for the loss of a fetus or a child: Bonanno, George A.; Wortman, Camille B.; Nesse, Randolph M. (2004).  “Prospective Patters of Resilience and Maladjustment During Widowhood.” Psychology and Aging, Vol. 19(2), Jun 2004, 260-271. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.19.2.260). 

Vander Plaats has never been shy in asking for money.  He required $1 million from Santorum to endorse Santorum’s candidacy for the presidency of the USA.  Vander Plaats determined, as he said, to make “an impact on the election” also had little qualms in the gamble of politics, and demanded money from Mitt Romney if Santorum faltered, and required both Tea Party/Republican candidates to sign a pledge to repeal equal rights for the LGBT community and rescind same-sex marriage.  It became known as “Pay for Play“, one with a long history especially among Baptists running for office, like Mike Huckabee.  It is not known if Vander Plaats included this soft-extortion on his income tax returns at either the federal or State of Iowa level.

How the “Reverend” Ratliff figures into this equation is his support of “born again” conservatives and uses his bully pulpit to whip up voter enthusiasm for those he considers worthy Christian conservatives.  His ploy was derailed however, by a more resolute and thinking Iowa-Nebraska NAACP that passed a resolution calling for recognition of same-sex marriages.  The resolution was simple and stated only that “We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”  That was one of the Constitutional amendments Rick Perry of Texas wanted to rescind in his effort to win the evangelical vote.

Evangelical extremists, were furious, and this swept in like a tsunami in North Carolina.  Far more ignorant, twice as dangerous to all people is North Carolina’s “Reverend” Charles Worley.  Worley has frequently demanded that LGBT members be executed, as he did in 1978.  It has long been his favorite sermon topic, but on May 13, 2012, Charles Worley went further ” in the name and love of our Lord Jesus Christ” whom he extolled while  vowing to build an “electric fence” and drop from planes all gays and lesbians into a compound so that all would die (read here, watch it here).

Worley is a clear reflection of The Grand Inquisitor in the parable told by Ivan to Alyosha in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880).  Jesus accepted everyone,  thereby incurring the wrath of the church and its leading voices of hate. The Grand Inquisitor, on whom the biography of Worley can easily be based, visits Jesus in his cell to tell him that the Church no longer needs him–the Church has transmogrified Jesus into the money-making, debasing and accusing demon that the Church wanted and thereby enriched the priestly class.  The Grand Inquisitor states as Worley does in his sermons: “He says “We are not with Thee [Jesus], but with him [the Devil/Satan], and that is our secret! For centuries have we abandoned Thee to follow him.” For he, through compulsion, provided the tools to end all human suffering and for humanity to unite under the banner of the Church. The multitude then is guided through the Church by the few who are strong enough to take on the burden of freedom. The Inquisitor says that under him, all mankind will live and die happily in ignorance. Though he leads them only to “death and destruction,” they will be happy along the way. The Inquisitor will be a self-martyr, spending his life to keep choice from humanity. He states that “Anyone who can appease a man’s conscience can take his freedom away from him”.  Jesus remains silent throughout the ranting of the Grand Inquisitor/Worley, but Christ kisses the Inquisitor on his “bloodless, aged lips” instead of answering him (the Grand Inquisitor and Worley see the kiss as a sign of homosexuality). 

Feeling the warm, passionate, committed Kiss from Jesus and terrified that one of his followers might have seen Jesus kiss him on the mouth, an act so common in the ancient world that had not yet been suffocated by Constantine’s invention of Christianity in 325 CE, the Inquisitor releases Christ but tells him never to return. Christ, remaining silent, leaves into “the dark alleys of the city.” While Dostoyevsky keeps the kiss ambiguous, its effect on the Inquisitor is as equally secreted. Ivan concludes, “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”  In the end Alyosha is worried that Ivan will denounce him for the tale, but instead Ivan places a “soft kiss” on the lips, to which the delighted Ivan replies, “That’s plagiarism… Thank you though.”  Unfortunately, LBGT community has not yet learned this war tactic against the evil of people like Worley, Vander Plaats, King, Owens, and others who would deny them their basic civil and human rights.

Worley, like Owens, King and Ratliff of Iowa demand a Christianity that is more savage than even the brutality of the Hebrew armies waging battle against their neighbors.  Like the parasites that crowded around the slaughter raged by the ancient Hebrews when stealing the land of the original Palestinians and Phoenicians, Worley’s congregation actually outdid the violent screams and calls for blood of the evangelicals in Nazi Germany as they raised their fists to salute the Führer “and the loving child Jesus” as did Joseph Ratzinger: the German pope Benedict XVI. 

The hatred spewed by Worley festered in Harlan’s Hills in southeastern Kentucky, leading to the murder on an April night in 2011, of a young gay man named Kevin Pennington; this was mild compared to the congregation of Ratliff and that feasts their fetid ferin fanatic faith.  He was murdered in cold blood by David Jason Jenkins, 37, of Cumberland, Ky., and Anthony Ray Jenkins, 20, of Partridge, Ky., while Anthony’s 19-year-old wife Alexis LeeAnn Jenkins, and his sister, Mable Ashley Jenkins (age 18), looked on.  Harlan’s Hill is billboards advertising personal-injury lawyers, drug-treatment centers and evangelical TV stars who play a powerful role in the impoverished community.  There are no bars, but 116 churches. One resident offered a succinct list of the places where people hang out: “church or jail.”

While William Owens, Alveda King, Keith Ratliff, Terry Brandstad and Bob Vander Plaats represents the worse possible examples in the USA, the pastors at Harlan’s Hills, like the self-gratifying Owens, King, Ratliff, Brandstad and Vander Plaats  incorrectly assume is that they represent Black people and equally speak for other races, nothing is less true.  These odious opportunists only represents tarnished theology, scatplogical politics by the elite and wealthy, and theocrats like C Street’s The Family, while the rest of the people in the USA are ignored, have their homes foreclosed, lose their jobs through outsourcing, and are demeaned by millionairs and billionaires, such as Wall

Street financier Steven Rattner, who demand that autoworkers earning $9 (others want to see table staff drop from $2.01 an hour to $1 an hour to ensure excellent service is given to the rich) an hour take a pay cut and offer their greivances up to a god of the superrich and vote Republican so that Reagan’s “trickle down theory” (that George H. W. Bush called “voodoo economics” has a chance to work. 

While the new Christian terrorists in the USA call for an end to same-sex marriages, claiming that all true patriotic and educated Blacks agree with them, this is not the case.  Former Four Star General and Commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), Collin Powell has no problem with same-sex marriages (see video) and finds no substance in pastors who pounce on it as a force of evil. 

Identical to all white supremacist movements (especially the Church of the Creator and Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan) in the USA and Canada, William Owens, Alveda C. King, and Keith Ratliff, Sr., would turn the CAAP into a threat to its members and society as a whole.  They have no problem with further destroying the tattered credibility of Christianity and show the darkest side of authoritarianism in religious fundamentalism (Asp, Erik; Ramchandran, Kanchna; Tranel, Daniel “Authoritarianism, Religious Fundamentalism, and the Human Prefontal Cortex” Neuropsychology, May 21 , 2012, doi: 10.1037/a0028526).  Williams, King, Ratliff and Vander Plaats use the same rhetoric of hate as found in the publications of David Horowitz and the ranting of Congressional representatives Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Steven King (R-NY), and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck (read here and here and here).  The rewriting of history and religion began nearly 1800 years ago when Christianity was invented by the Emperor of the Roman Empire Constantine I called for a council of his warrior bishops to meet at Nicaea.  While the majority of CAAP and the NAACP and some religions have moved on into the twenty-first century and have adapted to the realities of the time, the dinosaurs of the past: William Owens, Alveda King, Keith Ratliff Sr., Bob Vander Plaats, Steven King and other fire-breathing ghouls prolong the agony of many as they glory in personal gore ridding the USA of freedom of and freedom from religion and the personal rights of the individual by ignoring Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, in an effort to tear down the wall separating state and church.