#Anti-Catholic fiction

[protagonistspub]

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies by Catherine Mack was a library find. It is my first, and most DEFINITELY the last, book from the author. It is in theory a cozy mystery. I will also never read anything by this author under her other publishing name of Catherine McKenzie. I’m just going to be upfront, this book is utter trash. So much so that I VLOG’d the reading experience. The…

[whereserpentswalk]

There's a god who sits in the room during important meetings. He's an old god. You might not know his name but you've seen his cult. He looks like a man in a white suit, with white skin, and blue eyes, blue eyes that he's proud of. He never laughs, never smiles, but he's happy, he's very happy with his world.

He's a dark god. The other gods hate him, hate him because they know what he's done. The cities he's conquered. The cities he's burned. The countless souls he's stolen. He'll tell his followers the other gods are devils, he'll tell them that they'll hurt them, that they'll kill them. And in the end he'll whisper that his underworld is all so much better then their earth.

And he'll stand within this world. Watching the people, though unlike the other gods, he watches with anger. Thinks of them as degenerates as he walks through the cities of mortals, the only ones he has any affection for is those who have made themselves his slaves, fully obedient like dogs. He says he loves them all, but he only loves the versions of them that they would be if he had full control. When the birds chirp he feels rage, he'd rather them all be in menageries, and walled gardens.

He's been through so much bloodshed. He's the god that crushed Jericho, that burned Tenochtitlan, the god that has whiped entire cultures off of the map. His soldiers are many, and their hands and loins reek of blood, the blood of those they call sinners and nonbelievers. But he is not invulnerable, far more then just mistletoe has refused to yield to him, he has died before, and asks the world to weep for that death, with hope we can kill him again, if we work together.

[edenslice]

actually, now that i've had time to think about it and actually discuss it w people i know irl, i guess i align myself as pro-fiction?

no, i don't condone crimes and sexual assault. i'm just saying i'm extremely anti-censorship and dead dove: do not eat media has every right to exist. ain't it just stupid to argue about niche fandom bullshit like this..........there is Life outside your phone........just block and move on regardless of how morally fucked up the content is

[mourntomidnight]

So in case you haven’t noticed, I just finished Tyler Hamilton’s The Secret Race book about his time in the Lance Armstrong Era of Cycling and its aftermath and the I started Malcom X’s Autobiography with a book regarding the jungian concept of the shadow to one’s personality and how to address it privately without taking it out on others sandwiched in at my dad’s request.

There was something of a very stark contrast between how Tyler told his story and how Malcom did and I could catch it within finishing the first chapter of of Malcom’s book. Something I noticed right away is that Malcolm took responsibility for how his actions as a kid made it difficult for his mom amongst losing his dad in a hate crime and having to deal with destitution at a vulnerable age. He also acknowledges his shadow to the point where he could not visit his mom anymore or even talk about her because he knew his shadow would spill over to violence.

With Tyler, while he acknowledges what he had to do regarding his road racing career and how he had to tell the truth ultimately, I notice he doesn’t take responsibility the same way Malcolm did by having to victimize himself and explaining that the sport was just like that so he had no other choice but to do it that way. But the thing is, he DID have a choice.

He CHOSE to dope

He CHOSE to partake in an inherently corrupt sport out of ambition even after pointing out the ways the tour could be reformed to where the riders don’t have to dope.

He CHOSE to lie and take advantage of his loved ones trust in him to protect his reputation

He CHOSE to attack others and use their struggles against them as a means of disinformation.

Idc if the dopers never saw it was wrong what they were doing and therefore not come clean in the first place, it’s still wrong to cheat and if you have to cheat to play then it’s not a sport worth partaking in.

It’s not worth risking everything and destroying ur body and reputation and prospects and ultimately have nothing to show for it.

This whole saga of the Lance era of cycling made me realize how gothic that era and even professional racing in regards to the tour is.

The obsession with winning at all costs, using dangerous drugs and medical practices and unhealthy diets to do so, the omertà and brotherhood that feels secret society—esque, the fact epo is referred to as Edgar Poe by the riders, the almost vampiric imagery of blood bags, the inner corruption by the orgs and individuals involved, and most of all: the fact that Lance Armstrong was so famous to the point of a super heroic, messianic status largely created by corpos like Nike and the like and how the public partook in it to the point of it being cult like, and when Armstrong was outed as a fraud and an evil person leading to a literal crucifixion by all parties that enabled him that outs him essentially as a satanic figure that in hindsight you think of Lance as the devil who disguised himself as an Angel, a messiah that took advantage of the desperation of a post—columbine, post—9/11 world that was looking for a hero, a savior and swindled them all out of ambition and greed is something that could’ve been a novel a particularly perceptive and skilled author would’ve wrote, but happened in real time at one point.

Even Malcolm acknowledged that if someone is winning all the time, they are cheating and how yt men have all the cards on their side, but Lance worked the system so much that even the system that was designed for him to get away with it turned on him because he couldn’t keep up the lie forever, because the world doesn’t work that like where swindling men can do it forever, because karma IS for real. And it was ultimately Lance’s anti social behavior that did him in.

The ultimate lesson that can be taken is how much of a lie celebrity culture is and how it’s just meant to be another consumerist profit motive and that we can’t rely on celebs and the like to save us, which is what leftists have been saying for literal decades going back to the panthers. Only we can save us from this colonial capitalist hell.

[bitchycasenthusiast]

Reading Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons rn, I’m pretty sure this guy did no research

[dstrider-3]

antis acting like youre going to die or youre a terrible person for things you consume fictionally or thoughts you have remind me of terrible christians/catholics who say youll die and go to hell for xyz

[perasperaadpasta]

I have no empathy for Good Omens or Sandman or whatever other Gaiman work fans who 1. just cannot help making the allegations about themselves and 2. are genuinely heartbroken to the point of being unwilling to reasses their attachment to these works (these usually overlap).

When I found out an author I was obsessed with, whose works I read nearly in their entirety and voraciously, whose stories inspired me and filled my imagination for years, turned out to be a paedophile who abused her children, facilitated the abuse of multiple others by her also paedophile husband, and raped her daughter, none of that... mattered anymore. How could it possibly?

I'm talking about Marion Zimmer Bradley, if her rap sheet isn't familiar. Having grown up a nerd who could read at highschool level at 7, and who was, at 12, already sick of how male-centered fiction (and particularly fantasy, my favorite genre) was, discovering The Mists of Avalon was a revelation. The pointedly anti-Christian, unapologetically female-centered narrative was a near-spiritual balm for a closeted lesbian kid in a Catholic small town.

I read all of her Arthuriana books and all of her Darkover series I could find. I'm interested in Arthuriana to this day because of the point of view she offered. The possibility of shifting the male gaze pervasive in art to a female view from within was so instrumental to how I approach art at all. And this is, of course, not pioneered nor exclusive to Bradley, but it was my introduction to it, to this critical and yet respectful framework of experiencing art.

And yet. When I learned what she'd done, it fundamentally and irrevocably changed what she'd said.

Is it really still a work of feminist expression if composed by a rapist? I cannot reconcile the thought that the most execrable creature in feminist thinking can be capable of anything but farcical, hypocritical emulation of sincerity, convincing as it may be. It cannot possibly be earnest and its pretense is pervasive. Even if the story was otherwise so good, so entertaining that its message could be sidelined, there's hardly a lack of that that makes this particular one indispensable.

My admiration for her is all revulsion now. I have no interest in what this sort of thing has to say about anything, safe for possibly in the context of criminal psychology.

I will never reread it. I will never recommend it as entertainment and least of all feminist entertainment.

And here's the thing, this wasn't life-ruining for me. This did not hurt me personally. My world didn't shatter, it didn't even crack. Important as it may have been, the loss of a THING, a book, ONE story in a world so saturated with them several hundred lifetimes wouldn't suffice to know them, is not a loss I would ever have the self-indulgent embarrasment of mourning. It was what it was once, and it is what it is now.

The only people who were hurt were her victims.

Absolutely no exceptions. It's vulgar to a degree I can't wrap my head around to consider otherwise.

[animentality]

the funny thing about the Black Butler revival is that Sebaciel is taking a lot of heat right now, here in the year of our lord and savior 2024, in which all ships are problematic and toxic.

because it's a pedo ship.

which is the most perfect low hanging fruit in all of anti existence.

but like, Sebaciel is really a microcosm of pro vs anti ship discourse in general, right?

everyone insists oh you like Sebaciel? you must be a pedophile... while totally ignoring that a lot of fucking teenage girls read Black Butler and imagine themselves AS CIEL. they have a crush on SEBASTIAN.

that's why they ship them. they're not generally lusting for the minor, they're imagining themselves as the minor, being MINORS themselves, and have crushes on the suave sexy demon guy... because that's literally budding adolescence in a nut shell.

Sure there are people who lust for ciel... but it's a fucking shonen. it's for teens.

Teens are allowed to have fucking crushes on Ciel and Naruto and Ichigo. They're also allowed to have crushes on adults, WHO ARE NOT REAL and can't return their affections or hurt them in literally any way other than fictional related trauma.

is it really that shocking that teens are projecting themselves on/lusting for the fucking kid protagonists? you know, like they're generally going to do??? because they're hormonal but also bc it's very normal for humans to have goddamn crushes on human shaped (and less human shaped) things???

and is it really that shocking that teens girls would lust after Sebastian?

are you telling them they can't do that, and then also ship their little self insert goth child with the object of their affection?

and also.

ALSO.

the harder thing for these people to swallow...

fucking adults can ship anything they want too.

literally who gives a fuck

just shipping a problematic age difference ship doesn't make you anything at all.

being an asshole in fandom spaces does, like harassing people for shipping or not shipping Sebaciel, sending death threats, doxing, whatever, but just the act of jerking it to Sebaciel fanfics, or writing them for yourself and friends, is not a goddamn crime.

nor is it anything other than a Catholic sin.

so I'm laughing at the modern discourse, as angry adults and teens try to cancel Sebaciel.

tale as old as time. but also Sebaciel is the fucking OG.

The og of queerbait shotacon nonsense.

you weren't gonna stop people in 2008, you won't stop them now.

just hang out in your own space and leave other people alone.

also just fyi. I don't ship this.

I ship toxic old man yaoi.

but I'm rolling my eyes and slapping you if I see you in the wild insisting a Sebaciel artist is a pedophile guilty of a real crime in real life.

get some fucking perspective.

[victoriadallonfan]

I don't agree with a lot of Sanderson's politics - and they aren't, in fact, based in Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints doctrine, but rather Utah culture - but it also makes me pretty uncomfortable to hear you badmouthing the church I'm part of?

I badmouth religious organizations in general, Catholic Church included (in which I was raised) because they tend to be overwhelmingly corrupt and abusive towards their own church members (and especially towards people outside of them)

Mormonism in particular is especially bad for how being part of the church requires “tithings” from paychecks plus their treatment of women, minorities, and even men in ways that are almost so explicitly manipulative and cultish that it feels like it comes out of parody.

(For example, I simply declared, “I am no longer catholic” and that was it. Done. You cannot generally do the same in LDS without incredible backlash and slander by its members)

And it’s very obvious when it shows up in fictional books by a lot of Mormon writers, because it’s so conservative that it’s a step or two behind the times.

It’s not as bad as Westeros Westboro Baptist Church or Scientology, but that’s not a high bar to clear.

If your time in the church was different, I’m happy for you, because it means you likely avoided the worst parts of their abuse.

Still, if you have the time, I’d suggest watching these videos (in no particular order):

Why I Left Mormonism - Video covering the creation of the channel “Cults to Consciousness” and her abusive home life under the church

The BITE Model - Simple PowerPoint explaining the reoccurring factors of cults

Ex-Mormon Cast Reacts to Mormon Debates -Cast of ex-Mormon members react to a Mormon debate and highlight various lies and falsehoods presented, as well talk about teachings/history Mormon Church does not want revealed publicly

How the Mormon Church ‘Help Line’ Hid Child Abuse - Exactly what it says. Survivors speak out and the church has done nothing for them or worse.

If you don’t want to watch these videos, if you can’t stomach the testimonies, ask yourself and others these questions:

- How often are you allowed to preach about Heavenly Mother?

- How often do you see women in power within the church, as in, deciding doctrine and not just playing piano or making food for the men?

- How often do you see minorities in power within the church, as in, deciding doctrine or being treated as a token?

- How often does your church talk about the incredibly high suicide rates for children and how it’s associated with its practices?

- How come when a racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic etc Prophet speaks its “the word of God” and doctrine, but then another Prophet can simply claim it was mere “policy”. Was ‘God’ lying to the prophets? Were the prophets lying about God? How can you trust what is their words and what is God?

- How come the church hid $30 Billion dollars from the public and even its own lower members?

- How come the founder lied about what was on the Egyptian papyrus, claiming it was a translation from God, but people who can actually read Egyptian pointed out he was lying?

- How come you get treated differently for asking these supposedly easy to answer questions?

I do not go after Brandon or you because you happen to be religious. I think belief in a higher power is one’s own choice and prerogative.

I instead care far more about the religious system that is using well-intended people like pawns for goals that pretty much boil down to money and power.

[olderthannetfic]

My least favorite flavor of "proship" brainrot: you can't be into something being taboo or wrong or bad. The characters must never think about how this is wrong or bad or forbidden, they can't angst about being attracted to their dad or someone one fifth their age, or else you're an anti. You're sex-negative. You're ashamed of yourself. You're not kink-positive. It's okay to like incest or shota whatever but you're not supposed to like the characters acknowledging this is a big deal or being guilt-ridden or giving into sexy, sexy temptation after trying to resist. They gotta get in, fuck and get out, no angst. Otherwise there's something wrong with you.

I went to Catholic school. I am always going to love "I know this is wrong but no matter how hard I try I keep having these thoughts!" That shit gets me off. It doesn't mean I'm a repressed Puritan. I own four dildos and three anal plugs, I have a dedicated spare hard drive full of porn, and my children were not immaculately conceived.

What you like in fiction doesn't reflect who you are IRL. I'm tired of having to explain it.

(To the "no true Christian proshipper would ever sin so grievously say a mean thing" crowd: I see you, I understand you, try not to cry too hard in the comments.)

--

[veetyuh]

I'm reminded of that "antishipping isn't purity culture because it isn't conservative christianity" post... And I think I've done some unpacking on why it triggers me so much.

I was an intersex child shoved into the role of a female, in a rural & conservative Christian environment. I've had not just purity culture shoved down my throat, but also the shame of not being able to meet the expectations put on women in that environment.

It's not just cover up, slut. That implies I had something to show off, to begin with. And men still want to ogle you and imagine what your body is like beneath that modest dress. So here, literal child. Have this shapewear to make your figure conform to that of a developing middle school female's under your clothes.

It's contradictory that way. You have to try to be unappealing to not 'tempt' men, but you still need to be appealing in the sense of conventional female attractiveness. Moreover, you must not think about men or sex at all. But you cannot be asexual — your parents demand grandchildren.

Antis do the same with their queer representation. It's the same contradictory expectations... They champion the idea of breaking societal norms through queerness (i.e. the idea of 'queer as in fuck you'), then demand that every nuclear family norm be met. Queer characters must be disruptive without actually disrupting anything. And the contradictions apply to fans, too — you're homophobic if you don't like a canon queer ship, and you're fetishistic if you like queer ships too much. (There are more, but I'd be stuck here forever if I listed them all. 😅)

There's also the obvious — fictional sins being as bad as things done in real life. There's Matthew 5, which includes so many popular verses about thought control that Christians use, and equates bad thought to bad doing.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

And fuck if antis aren't cutting off their entire goddamn arm and gouging out both eyes.

It's not just purity culture they embody, though — it's the satanic panic, too. Good lord the amount of times my grandma wouldn't let me watch Ghost Hunters because she thought I was welcoming demons into the home, or her concern for me watching horror movies because I'd surely become more violent. It's the same shit, different horse.

On a more light-hearted note, they play the same game that Christian demoninations do, too. I was Baptist, and considered the Methodists okay. But the Catholics? No, keep that shit away from me. Why are you worshipping Mary? That's idolatry! How horrible, to openly spit in God's face. When I read antis' DNI lists rattling off forbidden, unredeemable fandoms, it feels the same way, haha.

But what really seals the deal for me is how they smile in your face and promise they're just looking out for you. Christians do that, too. "We want you to get better. We want to help you. You're on a dark path." While they break your bones to force you into their mold. You may not be hurting anyone on your dark path, but they'll convince you that you ARE. You're hurting yourself "spiritually," you're hurting the community, your family, by being an abomination to God. You're hurting everyone and yourself, you just need us to help you realize it. Antis feel the exact same. I block them pre-emptively because I cannot handle having that shit directed at me again.

Moreover, their insults feel the same. The childish "icky," the ad hominems. It's too reminiscent for me. Of my mom hating my icky facial hair and my classmates making fun of my masc traits when they thought I couldn't hear; you are a gross person!!1! Ew!!!

It's funny that antis are so often anti-kink, considering they're so fucking intent on giving me a golden shower and telling me it's rain. I hope they're careful not to choke on the homophobic, pedophilic pastor cock they're sucking.

[fangirleaconmigo]

Abortion in The Witcher Books

Would anyone like to come along with me on a deep dive regarding abortion in The Witcher books? Not enough people talk about the fact that Geralt of Rivia is explicitly pro-choice and that the sorceresses are seen providing reproductive care, including abortion, on multiple occasions. So, let's do that.

There are a lot of things you can say about The Witcher books, feminism, misogyny, and the male gaze. (I am considering doing my first video on this very topic. It is complicated. This is not a 'the books are perfect' post) But one thing we can never say is that they are wishy washy about bodily autonomy, and more specifically, abortion. (In fact, that is the entire point of Ciri and Geralt's arc, which I will get to at the end of the post)

This topic came up awhile back because a 'witcher school' was closed after the owners were found to have ties to far right organizations, including anti-abortion organizations. So, I did a little thread on twitter about it, wondering how you can call yourself a Witcher fan (to the extent that you license a fan activity business!), and miss the entire fucking point. It was my most popular (and ofc hated by others) tweet ever, which was interesting, but I was mostly surprised that so many people were shocked to learn that Geralt of Rivia is, as a character, canonically, verbally, explicitly pro-abortion rights.

So I’m going to put the info here too in case any of you here find it interesting. Obviously there will be spoilers for the books.

TW: discussion of sexual assault, pregnancy, and basically anything having to do with reproductive health.

Before I start, I want to say that the book refers to abortion in reference to rights for women throughout, so that is the language in this article. I want to be clear that I (as an individual) understand that abortion is relevant to other genders and that I support it for trans men, non binary people, literally anyone. Abortion should be safe and on demand for all. But this is not a post analyzing my views on abortion, but the appearance of abortion in fictional psuedo medieval-esque fantasy world of The Witcher books.

Ok, I’ll start with the fact that sorceresses provide reproductive care in the books, including abortions.

In, The Last Wish (p210) Geralt tries to give Nenneke money to help Yen with fertility treatments. (In the books he does not mock her desire to have a child) He knows Yen wants to be a mother, and he wants to help. Nenneke replies that she does not need his money, and that providing abortions pays a hell of a lot better than witchering.

"You're more of an idiot than I thought." Nenneke picked up the basket from the ground. "A costly treatment? Help? Geralt, these jewels of yours are, to her, knickknacks not worth spitting on. Do you know how much Yennefer can earn for getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy for a great lady?"

Witches as providers of abortion is a very common trope in fantasy fiction for a very good reason. In order to stamp out paganism and polytheism, European colonists vilified the village wise woman as a murderer of children, hence the 'boil them in a pot, stuff them in the oven' stories about witches. Many people interpret this as the vilification of abortion. In the classic 1972 feminist text Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Ehrenreich and English quote Malleus Maleficarum, the witch hunting manual written by Catholic clergymen in 1487, to show that women providing reproductive healthcare was one of the 'characteristics' of a witch.

The witch that provides reproductive healthcare fits in very well in the witcher world, where Geralt and the witchers are embodiments of the working class who are used as tools and exploited. They are loathed until they are needed. The same is true of abortion providers. They are hated until they are needed, and they are always needed.

It also fits in well with the themes of class. In the Witcher books, it is stated multiple times that it is upper class women who are accessing this care from sorceresses. That is real. It is the truth that outlawing something very very often only means outlawing it for the poor and working class. The wealthy always find a way.

In Season of Storms, the sorceress Coral and her assistant Mozaïk provide reproductive healthcare to "wealthy, upper-class ladies" on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Geralt comes to speak to Coral in chapter sixteen and both of the women are wearing white doctor coats. They have just helped a woman deliver a baby and it is implied that the baby died and they are both upset. They do not want Geralt there, because (it seems to me) they need space to grieve, and they do not expect him to understand. They send send him away, suggesting he go spend time with Dandelion.

She walked over and kissed him on the cheek without a word. Her lips were cold. And she had dark circles under her eyes.

She smelled of medicine. And the fluid she used as disinfectant. It was a nasty, morbid scent. A scent full of fear.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she forestalled him...She looked at him and it was a faraway look, from beyond a chasm of time and events between them. He needed a few seconds to understand how deep that chasm was and how remote were the events separating them.

"Maybe the day after tomorrow would be better. Go to town. Meet that poet, he's been worried about you. But now go, please. I have to see a patient."

After she had gone, he glanced at Mozaïk....

"We had a birth this morning," she said, and her voice was a little different. "A difficult one. She decided to use forceps. And everything that could have gone badly did."

"I understand."

"I doubt it."

"Goodbye Mozaïk."

There are multiple other references to abortion in relation to sorceresses; I won't quote them all. But I'll leave you with one other reference. In Lady of the Lake (pp114), in a very funny moment, Angoulême says she has a 'small problem' and Fringilla replies:

"I understand," nodded the sorceress. "It's nothing dreadful. When was your last period?"

Angoulême is rather put out at the thought of being pregnant.

"What do you mean?" Angoulême leaped to her feet, frightening the chickens. "It's nothing of the sort. It's something completely different!"

So, sorceresses provide abortions and other reproductive care.

But what about the men? What about the heroes?

Well, several of the male protagonists state explicitly in no uncertain terms that abortion is an inalienable, sacred right. That includes Geralt himself.

Here is Geralt taking to Queen Calanthe in Sword of Destiny (p345). She asks him whether he hates his mother. In the course of his answer, Geralt says that abortion is “a choice which should be respected, for it is the holy and irrefutable right of every woman.”

"A choice. A choice which should be respected, for it is the holy and irrefutable right of every woman."

That’s a strong goddamn statement. There’s no doubting his meaning or the strength of his conviction. And it isn’t just Geralt. Dandelion (Jaskier), Cahir (he is traveling with Geralt as part of the hansa in the books, please set aside anything you think you know about him from TWN), and Regis (Geralts dear friend) all explicitly support abortion rights, quite passionately.

In Baptism of Fire (p317), one of Geralt’s dear friends (my favorite, the love of my life, Milva) shares that she is pregnant. They are on a brutal journey through a war zone looking for Ciri. So it’s complicated. Another friend, barber surgeon vampire Regis has prepared an elixir for her to induce an abortion. So, not only do sorceresses provide abortions, but so do vampire barber surgeons, one of the most lovable heroic characters in the books.

But before he administers it, Regis gathers the rest of the company. Regis knows Milva feels like shit at the prospect of burdening them, so he is worried that she is making the decision under duress. They don’t immediately understand why he is bringing the matter to them.

At first they think he is asking for opinions on whether she should get an abortion. They are baffled. Cahir answers first. He says in Nilfgaard it is always a woman’s right to choose.

"In Nilfgaard," Cahir said, blushing and lowering his head, "the woman decides. No one has the right to influence her decision. Regis said that Milva is certain she wants the medicament. Only for that reason, absolutely only for that reason, have I begun-in spite of myself-to think of it as an established fact. And to think about the consequences. But I'm a foreigner, who doesn't know...I ought not to get involved. I apologize."

So, Cahir says that maybe it’s a foreigner thing. Maybe it’s different for them. Dandelion (Jaskier) is offended and outraged by the implication that they believe any differently.

"What for?" the troubadour asked, surprised. "Do you think we're savages, Nilfgaardian? Primitive tribes, obeying some sort of shamanic taboo? It's obvious that only the woman can make a decision like that. It's her inalienable right. If Milva decides to--"

At this point, Geralt cuts Dandelion off. Geralt alone actually understands that there is something else happening here, that they are misunderstanding Regis and further questions are in order. Geralt begs Dandelion to stfu, which the bard misinterprets. He thinks Geralt is disagreeing with him and is considering opposing Milva's right to choose. Dandelion LOSES HIS TEMPER at the thought that Geralt would deny Milva her right.

Geralt becomes even more irritated and angry at the implication that he would do such a thing.

So, not only do we have witches as abortionists in The Witcher books, we have men, the hero (Geralt) his best friend (Dandelion), my beloved Regis, and Cahir say explicitly that abortion is an inalienable right.

And that should be no surprise.

Bodily autonomy and reproductive rights is at the very heart of the story. You do not have The Witcher story without it. It drives the narrative, the conflict, and Geralt and Yen's character arcs.

There is a criticism I see floating around quite a bit, that having Yen's story driven by her desire to be a mom and to physically reproduce is anti-feminist, or at least a tired reductive trope of women being defined by their maternal instincts.

I get that. I get tired of womanhood being defined by reproduction and motherhood as well. Biological essentialism when it comes to gender is exhausting and regressive. However, in this context, it is entirely clear to me that the point is NOT that all women should want to be pregnant. The point is the bodily autonomy, to be pregnant if you want to, and to not be pregnant if you don't want to.

Look at Ciri. She essentially becomes the main character by the end, and the idea of being pregnant repulses her.

So, in Lady of the Lake, Ciri is being held captive by elves, who want to do the same thing to her that everyone else does--breed her. The deal they offer her is, she does not 'have' to have sex with anyone until she is impregnated, but if she doesn't, she can't leave. (So, if she is to access what every human wants--freedom--she has to. This is still rape. It is coerced sex) She is understandably distraught and enraged. The part of that deal she seems most disgusted by, is the idea that she could be pregnant.

"But I don't want to!" yelled Ciri so loudly that the mare skittered beneath her. "I don't want to, understand? I don't want to! The thought of a bloody parasite being implanted in me is sickening. I feel nauseous when I think the parasite will grow inside me, that--"

She broke off, seeing the faces of the elf-women.

So yes, she is distraught that her bodily autonomy is being taken from her yet again. But perhaps the most upsetting part is the idea that she could be pregnant. It physically repulses her.

Now. Let's put this in context.

In this psuedo-medieval-esque setting with royal families, being used as a brood mare is COMMON and ACCEPTED. IN FACT, Calanthe, Ciri's OWN GRANDMOTHER was marrying her off against her will, betrothing her as a child. No one thought this was weird. It's your duty, right? No big deal. Even Geralt, when he first met Ciri, thought it would be a better life for her. Sure, it's against her will. But it's physically safe and luxurious. And he leaves her behind in Brokilon.

But at some point, Geralt puts two and two together. He connects his trauma with hers. He makes a decision that even if almost no one around him in his culture or on the continent, sees the importance of her bodily autonomy or agrees with him, he's protecting her. Not just against death, but against anyone taking her choice from her. When he is having a mental breakdown in Brokilon, worried about her, he tells Dandelion that he is trying to protect her from what happened to him. He doesn't say, she can't die. Or I can't let her be killed. He says she cannot be alone. She cannot go through what I went through. Here, I"ll let him say it: (Time of Contempt, p240)

"Listen to what?" shouted the Witcher, before his voice suddenly faltered. "I can't leave---I can't just leave her to her fate. She's completely alone...She cannot be left alone, Dandelion. You'll never understand that. No one will ever understand that, but I know. If she remains alone, the same thing will happen to her as once happened to me...You'll never understand that..."

"I do understand. Which is why I'm coming with you."

Honestly, I tear up thinking about it.

And Yen, well, she has a similar arc.

Yen has been abused and used as a tool, and along the way she has accepted that this is the way things are. Yen has even done the same to others. But she looked into that little face, those wide green eyes, and at some point she also connected the dots. There's another way of doing things, and maybe it is possible for a little girl to choose for herself. And even if it isn't possible, maybe the important thing is to fight for it. Maybe Yen can give her whole life to let a child just be a child.

Yen goes through torture and imprisonment for Ciri. She shoots lightning at a god, she shouts at a goddess, she drops through a portal into the sea, she gives up every last shred of political power she has spend ninety years accruing, she WILLINGLY tries to give her own life MULTIPLES TIMES, to save Ciri.

And from what? Death? Not always. At the heart of all this sacrifice is that Yen has made a decision that Ciri gets be a human who is given the dignity and respect of deciding what to do with her own body. To be a kid, not a tool. To be a person. To be free.

So Ciri gets to say, actually, for me, the idea of pregnancy is terrifying and repulsive and therefore, I don't want to do it.

In the end, Geralt, a person whose body was tortured and experimented on before he was too young to consent, and Yen, a woman who was abused and used, and BOTH of whom had their reproductive rights taken from them, decide to love Ciri and protect her bodily autonomy at any and all costs.

That is what drives the story. It drives the narrative. It drives both Geralt and Yen's character arcs. It is, in fact, the entire point.

So it should not be a surprise that abortion, and the right to have an abortion if necessary, is an inextricable part of The Witcher world. No, you cannot analyze these books and find 'perfect politics'. They are not politically correct. And there are many parts I can critique. I mean, we can critique anything. (and I do)

But I find it endlessly interesting that people who are conservative or right wing think that this property 'belongs' to them, and they want to push everyone else out, when all they have to do is pay the most minimal amount of attention and have really only two (2) brain cells to rub together, to see that they are indeed, incorrect.

[catholic-character-tournament]

Round 5 - Catholic Character Tournament

Propaganda below ⬇️

Pope Pinion IV (Cars)

HELLO. IT IS I. THE GREAT AND ALMIGHTY ITALIAN TOURNEY. PLEASEPLEASE PUT HIM IN THERE WAS SO MUCH POPE DISCOURSE ON MY ACC AND HE WAS SOLOED IN THE FIRST ROUND BY LUIGI😭😭😭💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔 PLEASE AVENGE HIMMMM

The existence of Catholicism in the Cars universe implies that there was (or at least there was believed to be) a car Jesus who died for the cars��� sins, and I for one would like to see how a car gets crucified or sins. I guess the blood/wine here would be gasoline, but what would the body/bread be? How did they sit at the last supper? What is the layout of car church? How does a car build a church? Do other human religions exist in the cars universe? How does a goddess with the body of a human and the head of a cat translate to a car? Do Buddhist cars rein-car-nate? Do cars have souls?

he lost the italian character tournament, he will win here

Harrowhark

I'm pretty sure you've already got plenty of submissions for her so I'll just say she was raised in what is basically a cult (technically a nunnery but let's be real) dedicated to keeping the body of the thing that will kill God behind the rock. One of their prayers is actually "I pray the rock is never rolled away". Harrow is extremely devout as penance for her earlier heretical actions in the tomb as a child (spoiler!) so the Catholic guilt really comes through

imagine being a catholic nun and you meet god, but it turns out he’s a twitch streamer from new zealand who became god because everything got a little bit out of hand. and just before you met him you gave yourself a diy grief-fuelled lobotomy with the help of your best frenemy. imagine how insane you’d be. now multiply that insanity by nine. that’s the fictional love of my life right there.

she meets god. she’s not inspired

she’s number one practitioner of space Catholicism. The locked tomb is chock full of Christian (catholic) imagery themes metaphors etc. just look at her she’s got a bone rosary

They're Catholicism with extra bones. Everyone is a nun. They have what is basically a rosary made from knuckle bones. They technically worship the same God as everyone else, but they're waaaay more focused on The Body in the Tomb (Mary) and we get a moment where we find out that while everyone else prays the equivilent of The Lords Prayer, they're doing the equivilent of Hail Mary. And they paint their faces with skulls.

She thinks leaving dry bread in a drawer is taking care of someone. She's in love with a 10,000 year old corpse (the same one they worship). She spent ALL NIGHT digging with her bare hands to make sure a field had bones every 5 feet so she could fight her girlfriend - I mean, greatest enemy. Spoiler territory: She's been puppeting her parents corpses since she was 8 years old. Instead of grieving her dead girlfriend, she gives herself a lobotomy. She makes soup with bone in it so she can use the bone IN THEIR STOMACH to try and kill them.

The author is/was Catholic and the entire series had heavy Catholic overtones. https://www.tor.com/2020/08/19/gideon-the-ninth-young-pope-and-the-new-pope-are-building-a-queer-catholic-speculative-fiction-canon/ A good breakdown of how it's Catholic

Anti-propaganda (spoilers)

I love the Locked Tomb series but Harrowhark has daddy issues with God, had a childhood crush on God's cryogenic partner, and is in love with God's daughter, not to mention that she's essentially a bone-bender. The religion on her home planet exists in a way that is technically against the will of the canon in-universe God, even. All of this to say, Harrowhark is heretical at minimum if not an outright witch. Terrible Catholic. Burn her.

[mariacallous]

Celeste Borys and Kira Lynch don’t leave the house much these days. When they do venture into their small Utah communities—to go grocery shopping, to take their kids to school or the playground—neighbors whisper and stare. “I’ve had people take pictures and videos of me, and I've had someone come up and yell at me,” Lynch says. “Someone at my daughter’s junior high told me to keep my mouth shut and called me some bad names. It’s terrifying.”

“I don’t leave unless I have to,” says Borys. “My day-to-day life doesn’t exist.”

The man whose followers scorn and harass them seems to have no such problems. Long a household name in conservative Mormon circles, Tim Ballard has become nationally known in recent years: He’s the former operative for Homeland Security who says he became so alarmed during the Obama administration by the government’s supposed inaction on child sex trafficking that he decided to go out and fight it on his own, recruiting other true believers to join him on dramatic sting operations in dangerous places, later serving as cochair of the Trump administration’s advisory council on trafficking and ultimately inspiring the heavily fictionalized film Sound of Freedom based on Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), the anti-trafficking organization he founded. (The organization now goes by the name OUR Rescue.)

Ballard is also a defendant in ongoing civil lawsuits in Utah brought by women—Borys and Lynch among them—who allege that he sexually abused them under the guise of saving children. Borys and Lynch have filed police reports regarding their allegations that Ballard sexually assaulted them; Ballard has denied the claims made against him. OUR, which is mentioned in one of the suits, has countersued Borys and her husband.

“This is just a bunch of random details, gossip, and easily disproven falsehoods packaged up to generate some quick clicks,” Ballard’s spokesperson Chad Kolton wrote in response to a request for comment; he also notes that the claims against Ballard in a separate suit have been dismissed. That suit was brought by a veteran Marine who said she was injured at a training overseen by Ballard; a judge ruled she did not have standing to bring it because she had signed a waiver.

While Borys and Lynch mostly stay at home, talking to their families, each other, and their lawyers, Ballard, when not defending himself by claiming he’s the victim of a shakedown, makes regular appearances at high-profile Republican events. He showed up at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. In March, he joined a Catholic event at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort alongside Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. In April, Mar-a-Lago hosted a fundraiser for the Ballard Family Legal Defense Fund. At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, he sat for an interview with Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. “The leftist agenda is almost verbatim the pedophile agenda,” said Ballard, grim-faced beneath a cap bearing the logo of Aerial Recovery, a self-described disaster relief and anti-trafficking group with which he now works. “You’ve got supporters here, Tim,” Giuliani told Ballard, adding, a moment later, “Pretty soon, you’re going to have one in the strongest and most powerful position in the world.”

All of this is fairly shocking to Lynch and Borys, who worked with Ballard at OUR. Just last summer, Borys says, she was by Ballard’s side as he crisscrossed Capitol Hill, meeting with Republican legislators about human trafficking and reveling with them in the success of Sound of Freedom, which brought in around $250 million in global ticket sales. “Those people know my face,” she says. “I was in those meetings and on phone calls and texting different people in the congressional world.” By fall, it emerged that Ballard and OUR had parted ways months before, following an investigation into claims of sexual misconduct that employees had made against him. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a longtime supporter of Ballard, publicly rebuked him for “morally unacceptable” behavior. And in the fall of 2023, accusers filed the first set of lawsuits against Ballard. Yet Ballard’s star on the Trumpist right never dimmed.

“They know what’s going on with him right now,” Borys says. “For them to ignore it but then to promote him, it’s so disgusting to me.”

Lynch met Ballard in 2021, when she was giving him a haircut. She’d seen Sound of Freedom in an early preview but at the time didn’t realize that she was cutting the hair of the man on whose life it was loosely based. All she knew was that he was famous.

“I’m kind of a big deal,” she remembers him telling her; he was taken aback and even offended that she didn’t know more about him. He told her, she says, about the amazing things he did and how children were saved by his operations.

“He’s talking about children and sex slavery,” she says. “I’m a mother of four. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I got sucked in right that second.”

When Ballard asked if she wanted to get involved in his mission, Lynch says, she enthusiastically agreed. She had just gone through a crushing divorce, and her father was dying of a brain tumor. Lynch was, she says, “desperate for something to come along and help me spiritually.” Lynch says that Ballard told her that he was close friends with M. Russell Ballard, a high-ranking member of the LDS Church’s second-highest governing body, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

OUR was a powerhouse long before Sound of Freedom appeared in theaters, raising millions of dollars in donations every year from devoted fans. The group’s exploits were frequently exaggerated. At the White House and in op-eds, for example, Ballard told the story of how the group had helped rescue a teenage girl who was trafficked from Mexico to New York and forced into sex work for several years, citing the story as evidence of the need for a border wall; at one point, he said the group had helped her “escape her hell.” In fact, according to court records, the girl rescued herself and didn’t come into contact with OUR until well after she’d escaped her captors.

Additionally, as early as 2020, a letter was circulating in philanthropic circles in Utah accusing Ballard of misconduct toward women. OUR denied everything: In a statement to Vice News at the time, an OUR spokesperson wrote, “OUR categorically denies the baseless allegations made in the anonymous letter shared with Vice. The OUR board of directors received the letter 12 months ago and, after a thorough investigation, found zero evidence to corroborate the allegations contained in the letter.”

In Lynch’s community, Ballard was still regarded as a hero. Members of her family, she says, were fans of Ballard’s; her mother gasped in excitement when she learned that Lynch had just done his hair, and showed her a shelf full of books that Ballard had written. “They were all praising him to the roof,” Lynch says. “Automatically, that put me in a very safe place with him in my head.”

Ballard’s books, several of which were published by an LDS Church–owned imprint and promoted by the conservative influencer Glenn Beck, contributed a great deal to his fame and followed two tracks. On one, he lays out supposed ties between figures from American history like George Washington and Mormonism. On the other, he positions himself as a modern-day abolitionist, part of a line with Harriet Tubman. One book, Operation Toussaint, is an adaptation of a documentary showing Ballard and his associates carrying out paramilitary work in Haiti. Missions like this were the basis of Ballard’s image as the leader of an elite group of operators doing the work governments didn’t dare and wresting sex slaves from the hands of traffickers. (Files from an investigation carried out by a Utah prosecutor and the FBI released under a public records request would later show these missions in a much less glamorous light—detailing, among other things, the role of a psychic medium named Janet Russon in providing intelligence and one of Ballard’s backers groping the naked breasts of a trafficking victim he believed to be a minor.)

Lynch never went on missions with Ballard. She was instead asked, she says—after being told of the visions he’d had of them working together to save children—to participate in training operations in which they went to strip clubs.

The first time, she alleges, Ballard arrived at her house beforehand with a close friend and OUR employee in tow, as well as Ballard’s son. At her house, Ballard asked her to put fake tattoos and eyeliner on him, getting into the undercover persona he used, which he called “Brian Black.” But almost immediately, Lynch says, once Ballard was in character, he began groping her and trying to kiss her body while she asked him to stop and reminded him that his son and friend were waiting. The behavior continued as the two rode in an Uber, Lynch says, which she calls “horrific.”

“He doesn’t listen,” she says. “He gets in this mindset where it's like he doesn’t see or hear you. It’s whatever he wants.”

Borys, for her part, began working with OUR in July of 2022 as a volunteer before moving on to paid roles in October of that year; by the time she left the organization, she was working as Ballard’s executive assistant. She also began secretly going on missions when, she says, Ballard told her he “was in the middle of a trafficking ring operation and needed a new female partner to come in” to play his girlfriend.

This was part of what Ballard has called the “couples ruse,” in which he and a woman would tell traffickers they were romantic partners, and act as such, while on missions. Ballard has claimed this was necessary to ensure that he and other male operators wouldn’t have to engage in sexual behavior with victims or traffickers while undercover.

Almost immediately after agreeing to work as Ballard’s partner, Borys’ affidavit says, she was flown to California to do “ops training,” which consisted of staying in hotels, hot-tubbing at a Four Seasons, doing workouts on the beach, and Ballard showing Borys what kind of physical acts they had to do while “undercover” and what his supposed boundaries were. She describes him lifting her shirt to admire her stomach, complimenting her “hot body,” kissing her on the neck and insisting it was fine since it avoided kissing on the lips, and showing her how he simulated sexual penetration during operations to fool traffickers who might be observing them.

Ballard, her affidavit says, told her that traffickers could “smell pheromones,” and so they needed to have real sexual chemistry in order to fool them. (The affidavit also alleges that Ballard removed his temple garment, which observant members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wear under their clothes, telling her “he sees angels all around, and that this isn't wrong.”)

Their first practice operation happened in Mexico, the affidavit says, where she was forced to get a couples massage with Ballard that culminated in a female massage therapist touching her in a sexual way while she froze, closed her eyes, and waited for it to be over. “I heard Tim say he had never seen this done so close and he was getting a lesson,” Borys writes in the affidavit.

"Within seconds, once I was there, I found myself in a situation where I didn't even have time to get out of it,” she says. “I was just staring at him for help.” Afterward, she recalls, she wept, and he told her, “We’re going to save so many kids, you have no idea.’”

Borys doesn’t believe these missions ever led to the rescue of a child. They nonetheless persisted—as did, her affidavit says, not just sexually abusive but spiritually manipulative behavior. Borys, who was raised a Latter-day Saint but is no longer practicing—”I’m so glad you’re not LDS anymore,” she remembers him saying—became enmeshed with Russon, the psychic medium. (Russon did not respond to a request for comment.)

“My life revolved around Janet and her readings,” Borys says; Russon would claim to channel her grandmother and allegedly encourage her and other operators not to worry about taking part in sexualized behavior.

“Janet would say, ‘Our bodies are just bodies, and God gave us bodies to use them to go save kids,’” Borys says.

Ballard, Lynch says, would also frequently assure her while touching her inappropriately that they were doing the right thing, saying things like “I know this is hard, but God will be with us,” and “we’re bringing light into dark places.” He also explicitly told her, she says, that the couples ruse was sanctioned by both God and M. Russell Ballard. (The denunciation LDS Church leadership issued of Tim Ballard in 2023 cited “the unauthorized use of President Ballard’s name for Tim Ballard’s personal advantage and activity regarded as morally unacceptable.”)

The allegations are not limited to the workings of couples ruse. At one point, Lynch’s affidavit says, Ballard came over to her house and sexually assaulted her on her staircase—something her lawyers say she reported to authorities in the fall of 2023, after joining the civil suit. (The following day, in text messages to her that WIRED has viewed, he asked to come by and pick up his belt, which he’d left lying on her floor.)

In early July, the women’s legal team filed a motion in which they say the state crime lab told them that DNA found on Borys’ skirt matched Ballard’s. (Borys alleges that Ballard sexually assaulted her and ejaculated on her leather skirt.) The motion urged the court to instruct the Utah County Sheriff’s Office to turn over the crime lab analysis to Borys’ legal team.

(In a statement to Utah outlet Fox 13, Ballard’s team accused Borys’ legal team of tainting a criminal investigation, asserting this was “consistent with the other illegal and unethical behavior that has been a hallmark of the Borys case.” Janet Russon, meanwhile, appeared on a podcast called The Last Dispensation and suggested that Ballard’s semen could have been found on her skirt because the two shared a suitcase. )

It took a while, Borys says, before she began to view herself as a victim of sexual misconduct. “I remember doing something on an op and I was so scared to go do this specific thing,” she says, her voice breaking. “And right before, all I could think was, ‘If little kids are having to do this, I can do this.’”

She would go home at night and make dinner—“trying to compartmentalize,” she says, while also texting with alleged traffickers on a burner phone.

“I would think I was doing good in the world,” she says. And she desperately wanted to see something tangible from the work—a “win,” she adds. “I felt so conflicted and dirty. I wanted that win so all the dirtiness would go away.”

At this time, Ballard’s reputation as a heroic anti-trafficking expert was at a peak. His rhetoric around trafficking—that it’s the world’s largest criminal enterprise, carried out with impunity due to the negligence and incompetence of the federal government generally and Democrats specifically—had become incredibly popular. QAnon believers took a particular interest, especially after Ballard appeared to support a false conspiracy theory that furniture company Wayfair sold children online by saying that “with or without Wayfair,” the selling of children online was “common.” (Jim Caviezel, who played Ballard in Sound of Freedom, has lent overt support to QAnon beliefs; Ballard, he claimed, taught him that traffickers extract a substance from children’s bodies that “elites” then inject to preserve their own youth. An OUR spokesperson denied at the time that Ballard had explained this to Caviezel.) As this was playing out, the QAnon-tinged Save the Children movement became a driving force in Republican politics, and Ballard himself began to eye a run for the US Senate.

In 2023, Ballard quietly parted ways with OUR following an investigation into claims of sexual misconduct that employees made against him. Lynch, who was not an employee, has a hazy memory of the time but remembers telling friends of an OUR employee that inappropriate things had happened. They, she says, told their friend, who then reported it to human resources. (Her lawyer, Suzette Rasmussen, confirms this sequence of events.)

Borys became Ballard’s executive assistant in early 2023. She was walled off, she says, from other OUR employees. When the investigation began, she knew little about it and was told that its scope was limited to a report made by one woman and would go away. It wasn’t until after she’d quit OUR, and after she’d seen attorney Suzette Rasmussen on TV discussing a suit the pseudonymous women she was representing had filed against Ballard in civil court in Utah, that she really began to process her experiences.

“I was still trying to understand all the stuff I had been going through working for him,” she says. “Once I saw Suzette, I felt like she was my safest place I could go to to protect myself.”

It wasn’t until after she’d gotten out of Ballard’s orbit, blocked his phone number, and filed a lawsuit, Borys says, that she started to understand how traumatized she was. “I was listening to a police officer doing a podcast or on the news, and he said you don’t get to—” here she pauses, and starts to cry. “You don’t get to create a victim by saving victims. And that really hit me.”

The legal process is ongoing; in addition to the suits and criminal investigation, Borys and Lynch have filed for permanent protective orders against Ballard, which currently await the scheduling of evidentiary hearings.

The two are also still very much processing their experiences not just with Ballard but with OUR, which neither now believes was ever a legitimate child-rescue operation.

“Where’s the proof?” asks Borys. “There just isn’t any proof, and when you try to talk to anyone about it who still works there and believes it, it’s like Tim Ballard—red in the face, flustered and frustrated. Instead of answering questions, they fire back at you.”

WIRED provided a detailed list of questions to Chad Kolton, a spokesperson for Tim Ballard. In response, Kolton wrote, in part, “I started responding to each of these and then reconsidered as it seems like a waste of time … There is absolutely nothing new about Tim’s work with Republicans which he’s done openly for years because they actually want to do something about the problem of trafficking rather than denying it exists. The cases against him have begun to fall apart, with one already dismissed and another facing an evidentiary hearing about serious allegations of illegal and unethical conduct by the plaintiff and her attorneys.”

OUR did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.

“I hope he goes to jail,” Lynch says. “That’s a really honestly hard thing to say, and it’s been hard to understand that might happen. I have to realize it’s not me putting him in jail. It’s not us. It’s him and what he did.”

She also, she says, simply wants the truth to be known.

“Nobody deserves to go through something like this, and someone like him doesn’t deserve to be on a presidential campaign or speaking engagements,” she says. “He doesn’t deserve that right right now.”

[damnfandomproblems]

6253

Lol. People saying they personally don't like something is one thing, but it's certainly purity culture when people try to censor and control what people read or create in fiction using the premise that it either "harms or corrupts The Children", or otherwise is too uncouth for a "normal, pure person" to read or create. Anti behavior may not be the textbook definition of puriry culture but it damn well is an outcome of it. There's a reason people compare it to Catholic puritanism. It enforces the same basic ideals on people in the hopes they will be pure and keep the people around them pure.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[disgruntledexplainer]

“Anti-Catholic racism was never a thing!”

My brother in christ, there was once a holiday in the 13 colonies called “Pope’s Day” which equated the Pope to the Anti-Christ.

also prior to the civil war there were roughly 200 books published in america by protestant authors, some of them rather famous, advocating for violence against catholics as a result of the British Catholic Emancipation Act giving irishmen civil rights. many of these involved replacement theory and depicted nuns as sex slaves, because of course horny men can’t help projecting their desires on saintly women. it got so out of hand that they started to be considered a form of pulp fiction.

And in the 1890s 11 italian catholic were lynched at the same time in lousiana for a crime they didn’t commit.

and in the early 20th century one of the primary targets of the ku klux klan were Catholics (along with Jews, Blacks, and Asians), resulting in vandalism and boycotts of business that merely employed even a single catholic employee. their newspapers regularly published articles claiming that the catholics and jews were plotting together to take over the us government.

and when JFK was elected president, a man who could only barely be considered culturally catholic, mainstream american society threw a fit claiming that the Pope was about to take control of the government. which of course he didn’t because that’s not how the government works.

and prejudice against mexican catholics persists to this day. not to mention rumors of the US government sterilizing mexican women crossing the boarder.

in 2020 alone, 172 cases of vandalism against Catholic Churches throughout the US were reported, including at least one stolen tabernacle and a desecrated host. over a protest that WASN’T EVEN REMOTELY RELATED TO THE CHURCH.

and now you yourself are freaking out because the supreme court has catholics in it.

dang brian, both historically illiterate AND racist. and i thought you were “woke”.