Elizabeth Smart speaks on human trafficking →

RELIGION DISTORTS PEOPLES’ SENSE OF SELF-WORTH:

Elizabeth Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

2 weeks ago | 14 notes | Reblog |
christianity, mormon, atheist, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, feminism, chastity,

see-to-sea:

I hate how much I struggle with Chastity. I hate how I struggle to keep it. I wish I had more LDS friends irl to talk too. I’m feeling pretty guilty and unworthy. And I feel like I shouldn’t, idk.

Help

“I’m feeling pretty guilty and unworthy.” This is how religion intends to make everyone feel by associating normal human responses to shame and guilt. The church, especially the Mormon church, chooses natural, healthy stimulants like sex and tries to distance you from then to make you reliant on the church to achieve any degree of happiness or satisfaction. However, sexual feelings are not something you can really control. You can suppress, but you can’t change the fact that you want to have sex. For the church,this creates a system perpetual dependence. You need the church to satisfy you and to keep you from doing something the church has told you is bad and you need the church as a place of contrition once you inevitably fail to meet their demands. It’s a perfect scam. You’re being used! You shouldn’t let this institution make you feel anyway at all. Whether they’re making you feel guilty or like you have some great purpose or whatever they’re just manipulating you.

Source : see-to-sea

1 month ago | 16 notes | Reblog |
mormon, church, religion, christ, atheist, prayer,

Mormons gang up on science teacher for saying the word "Vagina" →

A high school science teacher in Idaho is under investigation by the state’s professional standards commission because he reportedly used the word “vagina” during a biology lesson.

Tim McDaniel, who teaches 10th grade science at Dietrich School, told the Twin Falls Times-News that four parents were upset when they learned that his lesson included the word “vagina” and information about the biology behind female orgasm.

According to students who have set up a Facebook page to “SAVE THE SCIENCE TEACHER!!” certain parents may have had a political agenda in going after McDaniel. Sixty-six percent of church goers in Lincoln County, where Dietrich is located, are affiliated with the Mormon LDS Church, according to 2002 Glenmary Research Center data.

“[T]here are a couple people in the community that are trying to get Mr. McDaniel fired for teaching the reproductive system, climate change, and several other science subjects,” students wrote. “All these subjects were taught from the book and in good taste. He cares for each of his students and goes the extra mile to help them all. Now is the time for us to help by supporting him!”

1 month ago | 72 notes | Reblog |
mormon, lds, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, atheist, religion, feminism,

So Romney really didn’t pay taxes for 15 years after all. Guess who helped him cover his tracks?

If you guessed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, dingdingdingdingding, you’re right!

Romney Avoids Taxes via Loophole Cutting Mormon Donations

The truth about Mitt Romney's "charitable" donations →

Here, via Forbes, is a breakdown of where the Tyler Charitable Foundation has given the more than $7 million it doled out since 2000:

1. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: $4,781,000
2. Brigham Young University: $525,000
3. The United Way: $177,000
4. Right to Play: $111,500
5. The George W. Bush Library: $100,000
6. Operation Kids: $85,000
7. Center For Treatment of Pediatric MS: $75,000
8. Harvard Business School: $70,000
9. City Year: $65,000
10. Deseret International: $50,000
Weber State University: $50,000

As you can see, the majority of the funding goes to the Mormon church. The second-biggest recipient is the Mormon university that Romney attended. Other recipients include Romney’s former business school, and the library of the former president he has an incentive to curry favor with. In all, it is clear that Romney’s donations are about taking care of his own and advancing his personal interests. Relative to his vast wealth, he has given relatively little to programs that assist those truly in need.

Donations to religious organizations are considered “charitable contributions” for tax purposes. So are private schools. But that doesn’t mean that giving your church money for a new stained glass window or helping your alma mater build a new swimming pool is charity in the colloquial sense.

The Business Insider breakdown of Romney’s personal donations in 2009 and 2010 is worth quoting at length, because it exposes just how miserly he actually is.

In 2010, Mitt Romney took $3 million in charitable deductions on his tax return, against adjusted gross income of $22 million.

$1.5 million was a direct cash donation to the LDS Church

$1.5 million was a stock donation to the Romney’s private foundation, which is called the Tyler Foundation. The Tyler Foundation, in turn, gave away $647,500 in 2010, of which $145,000 went to the church. (The Tyler Foundation is controlled by the Romneys, so any money the Tyler Foundation gives away is effectively money the Romneys are giving away)

In 2010, therefore, Romney gave third parties (other than his foundation) a total of $2.1 million, with a total of $1.7 million going to the church. 78 percent of Romney’s donations in 2010, therefore, went to the church.
In 2009, meanwhile, Romney’s private foundation gave away a total of $631,000. This was made up of four gifts:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ($600,000)

My Sister’s Keeper ($5,000)

The Becket Fund ($25,000)

Mass General Hospital Cancer Center ($1,000)

In 2009, therefore, 95 percent of the money Romney’s foundation gave away went to the church.

The other recipients of Romney’s money are often right-wing anti-gay groups. As Raw Story reported: “The Tyler Charitable Foundation, set up and funded by the Romneys, donated $10,000 in 2006 to the Massachusetts Family Institute, which promotes the ex-gay therapy. The charity also donated $25,000 to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which opposes same sex marriage and has compared LGBT activists to the terrorist group al Qaeda.”

Romney Suggests Obama Has Plans To Remove God From Currency →

Mitt Romney put God at center stage of his stump speech during a campaign stop in Virginia Beach Saturday. Alongside televangelist Pat Robertson, Romney made it clear, in case you were wondering, that he has no intention of taking the word “God” out of his party’s platform or off the country’s currency, reports Politico. It was a not-so-thinly-veiled attack against Obama and the Democrats, who took heat from conservatives for not mentioning God in their platform. They later reinserted it.

After leading a reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in the middle of his remarks, Romney began talking about God. “That pledge says ‘under God.’ I will not take God out of our platform. I will not take God off our coins. And I will not take God out of my heart,” Romney said to roaring applause from the audience. Romney also pledged to “rebuild America’s military might” to an audience that was heavy on military families, reports CNN.

8 months ago | 9 notes | Reblog |
Christian, Christianity, mormon, god, faith, prayer, media, belief, atheists, atheism, agnostic, agnosticism, church state seperation, romney, obama, 2012, election, politics, White house,

Glenn Beck cries like an insolent child after a flight attendent doesn't give him special treatment →

No one besides Beck, including Beck’s wife, notices the slight against the paranoid, racist, misogynist, conspiracy theorist who is no longer on television.

8 months ago | 4 notes | Reblog |
Fox, news, media, conservative, liberal, left wing, right wing, republican, democrats, Glenn Beck, politics, gop, Tea Party, progressive, dnc, rnc, mormon,

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney believes that “some” Americans have taken the separation of church and state too far, “well beyond its original meaning.”
In an interview released Tuesday with the Washington National Cathedral’s magazine, Cathedral Age, Romney said those who “seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God” aren’t acting in line with the Founders’ intent.
The separation of church and state is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution, but Congress and the courts have debated the practical extent of that separation since its founding.
Romney said the Founders didn’t intend for “the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation ‘Under God, ‘and in God, we do indeed trust.”

In a masterful bit of deception here, Romney glosses over the fact that the founders never said anything along the lines of “one nation under god”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney believes that “some” Americans have taken the separation of church and state too far, “well beyond its original meaning.”

In an interview released Tuesday with the Washington National Cathedral’s magazine, Cathedral Age, Romney said those who “seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God” aren’t acting in line with the Founders’ intent.

The separation of church and state is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution, but Congress and the courts have debated the practical extent of that separation since its founding.

Romney said the Founders didn’t intend for “the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation ‘Under God, ‘and in God, we do indeed trust.”

In a masterful bit of deception here, Romney glosses over the fact that the founders never said anything along the lines of “one nation under god”

9 months ago | 10 notes | Reblog |
romney, left wing, right wing, conservative, liberal, progressive, church, church state seperation, atheist, atheism, taxes, religion, god, faith, humanity, spirituality, prayer, bible, mormon, belief, 2012, election, obama, first amendment,

Bloomberg BusinessWeek: How The Mormons Make Money

Some interesting segments:

the church’s holdings are vast. First among its for-profit enterprises is DMC, which reaps estimated annual revenue of $1.2 billion from six subsidiaries, according to the business information and analysis firm Hoover’s Company Records (DNB). Those subsidiaries run a newspaper, 11 radio stations, a TV station, a publishing and distribution company, a digital media company, a hospitality business, and an insurance business with assets worth $3.3 billion.

AgReserves, another for-profit Mormon umbrella company, together with other church-run agricultural affiliates, reportedly owns about 1 million acres in the continental U.S., on which the church has farms, hunting preserves, orchards, and ranches. These include the $1 billion, 290,000-acre Deseret Ranches in Florida, which, in addition to keeping 44,000 cows and 1,300 bulls, also has citrus, sod, and timber operations. Outside the U.S., AgReserves operates in Britain, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. Its Australian property, valued at $61 million in 1997, has estimated annual sales of $276 million, according to Dun & Bradstreet.

The church also runs several for-profit real estate arms that own, develop, and manage malls, parking lots, office parks, residential buildings, and more. Hawaii Reserves, for example, owns or manages more than 7,000 acres on Oahu, where it maintains commercial and residential buildings, parks, water and sewage infrastructure, and two cemeteries. Utah Property Management Associates, a real estate arm of the church, manages portions of City Creek Center. According to Spencer P. Eccles from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, the mall cost the church an estimated $2 billion. It is only one part of a $5 billion church-funded revamping of downtown Salt Lake City, according to the Mormon-owned news site KSL. “They run their businesses like businesses, no bones about it,” says Eccles.

n addition, the church owns several nonprofit organizations, some of which appear to be lucrative. Take, for example, the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC), a 42-acre tropical theme park on Oahu’s north shore that hosts luaus, canoe rides, and tours through seven simulated Polynesian villages. General-admission adult tickets cost $49.95; VIP tickets cost up to $228.95. In 2010 the PCC had net assets worth $70 million and collected $23 million in ticket sales alone, as well as $36 million in tax-free donations. The PCC’s president, meanwhile, received a salary of $296,000. At the local level, the PCC, opened in 1963, began paying commercial property taxes in 1992, when the Land and Tax Appeal Court of Hawaii ruled that the theme park “is not for charitable purposes” and is, in fact, a “commercial enterprise and business undertaking.” Nevertheless, the tourist destination remains exempt from federal taxes because the PCC claims to be a “living museum” and an education-oriented charity that employs students who work at the center to pay their way through church-run Brigham Young University-Hawaii.

“There are religious groups that own radio stations, but they don’t also own cattle ranches. There are religious groups that own retreats, but they don’t also own insurance companies,” says Ryan Cragun, a sociology professor at the University of Tampa and co-author of the recently published book Could I Vote for a Mormon for President? “Given their array of corporate interests, it would probably make more sense to refer to them as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Holdings Inc.”

Mitt Romney and others at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded in 1984, gave the Mormon Church millions’ worth of stock holdings obtained through Bain deals, according to Reuters. Between 1997 and 2009, these included $2 million in Burger King (BKW) and $1 million in Domino’s Pizza (DPZ) shares.

According to an official church Welfare Services fact sheet, the church gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid in more than 178 countries and territories during the 25 years between 1985 and 2010. A fact sheet from the previous year indicates that less than one-third of the sum was monetary assistance, while the rest was in the form of “material assistance.” All in all, if one were to evenly distribute that $1.3 billion over a quarter-century, it would mean that the church gave $52 million annually. A study co-written by Cragun and recently published in Free Inquiry estimates that the Mormon Church donates only about 0.7 percent of its annual income to charity; the United Methodist Church gives about 29 percent.

After Stan professes his ignorance of the Joseph Smith story, Gary’s Father begins telling the story of the Mormon prophet’s vision.

Essential viewing on Mormonism.