Saving the Heathens or More Christian Hypocracy?

When the fundies go after a new target audience, I tend to arch an eyebrow with suspicion. Much of my cynicism comes from seeing first-hand so much of the "good" work done by missionaries in foreign countries.

Now don't get me wrong...if you feel a calling to pack up your life and go to a region of the world where people are suffering and starving and you work your ass off to plant fields, dig wells and raise livestock, that's magnanimous by any definition.

If, in this process, you bolster your own spirit by praying and reading scripture, then that's fine as well. But when you decide that providing succor to the suffering is contingent upon their accepting your faith and worshiping alongside you, you're crossing an indelible moral line.

The resurgence of right-wing Christianity in America is probably best defined by the old question "how do you boil a frog?" You don't throw it into a boiling pot; instead, you put it in temperate water and turn up the heat until it's cooked.

Christianity has been inserted into previously uncharted territory, becoming highly visible in the fringe. There has been a rise in Alt-Christian music, Christian surfers, and skateboarders. (Personally, it always gives me a jolt when I come across a random surfer who wants to strike up a conversation about his relationship with Jesus Christ as I'm peeling off my wetsuit.)

Now the fundies are getting into porn. Oh, don't get me wrong...they've been watching it, ahem, religiously, for years. In fact, the Pat Robertson media outlet CBN reports that "a survey of men at a Promise Keepers rally showed half had looked at porn in the week just before the rally." Meanwhile, Christianity Today magazine found 37 percent of pastors admit to struggling with pornography.

Enter the XXX Church. The ministry's website opens with a hot pink page with a picture of porn king Ron Jeremy hoisting a cigar. The schtick here is that "porn pastor" Craig Gross, himself the embodiment of a Tim Burton character, tours the country with Jeremy, publicly debating pornography.

Meanwhile, Gross's church aims to save the porn industry from itself, setting up booths at trade shows in order to pass out New Testament Bibles emblazoned with "Jesus loves porn stars" to the wicked and sinful of the industry.

Under the umbrella of what seems to be a multimedia marketing firm called Fireproof Ministries, XXX Church places a high importance on getting so-called porn stars out of the industry. Their Save a Ho Ester campaign lays out the following requirements in return for salvation. Among them:

"Local church involvement; Willing to be accountable to leaders of local church and individuals within the ministry; Stop receiving funds, royalties, gifts, or previous royalties from prior industry work; Fill out monthly accountability report detailing finances, relationships, etc; Willing to not live with anyone of the opposite sex unless married; Cannot take any job in modeling or sex industry."

In return, there are vague promises to "exhaust all resources" to assist with things like schooling, counseling, legal, and living expenses. On that front, Fireproof Ministries tells those hopping off the porn train that "We will send up to $500 at the beginning of the month for the first 12 months providing all obligations have been met from the previous month."

Um, okay.

Not surprisingly, in its some five years of existence, XXX Church hasn't "saved" too many porn queens. According to most published reports, the industry and its members tend to ignore the church, regarding it as a fly in the KY, so to speak. Some have befriended the group, not necessarily agreeing with their message, but supporting their right to promulgate it.

In one case, a director who spoke with them at a porn convention said, "Oh, I get it. You guys are like Jesus walking with the lepers." He was impressed with their approach, and he offered to shoot a commercial for them at his own expense.

Christians have always loved the stories of Jesus washing the feet of prostitutes. But in this case, XXX Church's biggest detractors are other Christians and churches.

"XXXchurch.com features a page full of hate mail-most of it from Christians who find their tactics too extreme. But Gross and Foster are unfazed-and point out that 16 percent of those who visit the site find it while surfing for porn."


Do As I Say, Not As I Do?

As some fundies consider the church to be "Porn's Worst Nightmare," I can't help but wonder why they are looking outside of their own rank and file. They've obviously got a healthy population of their own who are watching adult fare throughout the week, then reporting for zealot duty on the Sabbath.

With Promise Keepers and ministers cruising x-rated materials, and folks stumbling across the main website (the tagline of which is "The #1 Christian Porn Site!") while looking for gangbang flicks, why put so many resources into the porn industry?

The reality is that Fireproof Ministries recognizes that it could be a player in providing Christian-based marketing and advertising to similarly minded groups. Their 2007 mission plan notes that they're making themselves available for lucrative advertising contracts, and have created a boutique marketing/graphic design component and record label.

In order to drive this over the top, they desperately need their own Mary Magdalene.

The porn star outreach has only succeeded in passing out bibles at conventions. Paying consulting fees to Ron Jeremy to debate porn in various venues provides them an insider to the industry. But no one is stepping forward to claim their salvation thanks to XXX Church.

Consider the case of the commercial-shooting porn director. "When asked if the pastors were getting through to him, DiGiorgio replied, "I'm sure that you and your viewers would love to have me say 'yes.' But unfortunately, 'no. I feel the faith that they have, okay, if you will, I sense that about them. I can feel it. It's a real thing. It's almost a tangible thing. Has it become contagious to me? I have to answer 'no.'"

The most obvious testimonial is blatantly absent: That from twenty-something founder Craig Gross. Gross's bio for his book Questions You Can't Ask Your Mama About Sex says simply that he is married with two children.

So where does his take on porn come from? One would think that, in order to speak intelligently about the topic, he would have had to have engaged in some "research viewing," but no mention is ever made. Is Craig Gross just an average twenty-something guy obsessed with sex? Why the adamant stance that porn hurts marriage?

Gross's single greatest take on porn is the way the industry treats its women. "There's no respect. To think that these are somebody's daughters. My pastor from my old church, Brian, is here with us. He says that these women are treated like dogs," says Gross.

Craig Gross's fellow Porn Pastor agrees with this hearsay. "Just look around. Look at the devices and the machines -- machines that are designed to do certain things to women. Yeah, it's degrading. There's no doubt about it."

And yet, millions of women (and their doctors) historically disagree.

In short, the whole premise of the church is based around casual observations, extrapolating the most generalized conclusions that spring to mind. But a lack of factual research has never stopped anyone from becoming a well-known evangelical preacher.

Nor will it stop Craig Gross and his porn crew, who are looking to expand their ministry into such desirable marketing demographics as college campuses, the X Games, WWE Professional Wrestling, and a highly coveted slot on the Vans Warped Tour.

Perhaps other church's biggest problem with XXX Church isn't that they choose to associate with the porn industry.

Maybe it's that the church requests hefty financial and in-kind donations from the faith community to bolster its for-profit branches such as its marketing firm and record label, even selling $500 "porn packages" to churches across the country. (Their goal of finding 200 churches to buy the packages means a tidy $100,000 to the church.)

Meanwhile, those same churches are home to members with a variety of very real needs. Those everyday folks aren't porn stars, and they won't further the XXX Church goals' of penetrating desirable commercial demographics, so they're left to their own devices while a twenty-something Porn Pastor pushes his agenda in front of a bank of cameras.

We're All So Effing Special

It was just a matter of time. In fact, I was expecting it as I wrote. In reality, it didn't take very long for the morons to roost over the Generation layZee story.

An astute reader picked it up and put a thread of the same name on a forum called Aantares. In short order, the self-righteous Boomers came out of the mist to wave their Righteous Indignation flags.

The forum Admin, who had obviously read the post, went so far as to agree with the fact (definition:a thing done; the quality of being actual; something that has actual existence; an actual occurrence) that Boomers were responsible for the highest divorce rates in history.

I was kind enough to include this same link in the original post, so that readers questioning the voracity of this phrase could take a paltry second to quelch any disbelief themselves.

But really, isn't it just easier to look at the three sentences that other, ahem, Readers, have taken the time to post, and just comment on that? Certainly, Aantares poster Raksha prefers this method.

It starts just how I imagined it would when I originally wrote the Generation layZee piece:

"As a Baby Boomer mom, I can't even begin to tell you how outraged I am!!!"

Everyone, please note that Raksha is in a froth, as evidenced by her triple exclamation marks. Her insight into parenting, and how she herself is an icon of the institution, is presented as, well, as fact:

"Parenting was one of the very few things I DIDN'T fail at, dammit!!! I'm still not sure WHY I didn't fail, but I'm not about to let the purveyors of conventional wisdom tell me I failed when I didn't!"

Raksha, you silly twit. I am hardly a "purveyor of conventional wisdom." All four of the people who read this blog with any regularity are splitting their sides laughing right now.

"I believe one reason I didn't fail was BECAUSE I tried to be a friend to my kids whenever possible. Of course, you can't do that when they're very small, but I dislike authorities and authoritarianism and was never comfortable in that role."

Hmmm...sounds just a tish like you're actually validating the things I said in the original post, where I claimed that Boomers preferred to eschew parenting and take the more passive role of being their children's little buddies. Really, it's a tremendous model. As we can see from generational evidence, it's working out really well.

In fact, the generation who had grown friends in lieu of parents are now charged with producing functioning, contributing members of society themselves. Been in a coffee shop lately? A mall? A restaurant? Have you tried to enjoy a great meal while a toddler screams his head off a nearby table while the parents feign situational deafness? Have you tried to order at a counter and been nearly knocked over by a free-range small child?

"I think this statement is total and complete b.s. and furthermore I feel personally insulted by it."

Well, Raksha, if it feels good, do it. Wait...didn't I say that in the original piece?

Raksha, you know why you should be "completely outraged" and "personally insulted?" Because I wrote that piece just for you, precious. You are so unique and special that I decided to write an entire blog post about your specific style of parenting and how your children are subsequently performing in the world.

Since I obviously fell short in making you feel good about yourself, I am forced to apologize. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I can only imagine the tremendous ripple effect this has produced in your life...loss of appetite, sleep deprivation, unable to perform simple tasks. My word, this blog should come with some sort of disclaimer akin to those in drug commercials!

But the thing is, sweetie, you never read the damn post. You're just an ignorant breeder who took one line out of a 984-word piece and drew a wealth of assumptions. Had you actually bothered to read the article before spewing your ignorant (definition: destitute of knowledge or education; lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified; resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence; unaware; uninformed) opinion, you would have seen that the post painted the broadest strokes of generational traits.

After all, people spend entire professional careers trying to identify and catalogue generational characteristics. I feel confident in asserting that I came nowhere close in a blog post.

But you're unique and special, Raksha. You can apparantly not only debunk the theory from the twenty words that you read, you can do it all because you're living proof! Your children are no doubt miracles. And it is precisely because you are so special that I am devoting an entire blog post to you.

But it's not like you'll actually read it.

Bringing Up Baby The True Tales of Generation layZee

Let’s face it. Americans are breeding their humans stupider, lazier, and more ill-equipped to cope with life. This has been a slow but definite decline since the Greatest Generation, who somehow produced the hedonistic and slothful Baby Boomers, who grew up to do a 180-degree shift into S&L scandals, accounting frauds, and corporate takeovers.

The Baby Boomers managed to be the poorest parents thus far in the history of America. Their “if it feels good, do it” credo resulted in the highest spike in divorce rates the country had ever seen, with divorce rates tripling between 1960 and 1980. To make matters worse, their desire to be friends rather than parents to their children (or ignore them completely) produced a generation of kids that were, at best, slow to adapt to adulthood--Generation X.

The younger Baby Boomers and the older Gen X’ers produced the latest debacle in human history...a generation I will refer to as “Generation layZee.” If Generation layZee has a posterboy, it is Casey Serin, whose incompetence, delusion and sociopathic tendencies should reignite a serious push toward eugenics.

Fuelled by a steady diet of late-night infomercials, shoddy public schooling, and a complete absence of a work ethic, Generation layZee strives to get ahead in life by some sort of social lottery system. This generation was never taught the importance of hard work, of resiliency. They have been simply coddled. And those responsible for this have done them no favors.

Last week’s massacre at Virginia Tech is another example of Generation layZee at its worst. Like Casey Serin, Cho Seung Hui was unable to take personal responsibility for his actions or his life, saying that others “forced” him to do what he did. In the bizarre rants left behind, the shooter angrily whines about rich kids, people being mean to him, and life not being fair.

Well boo fucking hoo. Here’s a reality check...if we look back to those Greatest Generation folks, we see that, after some of them had their names forcibly changed on Ellis Island, their new world greeted them with signs in shop windows that said “No Dogs or Irish.”

Or how about the Tuskegee Airmen? Every last one risked their lives in service to a nation that treated them as second-class citizens. Some were killed, others were held as prisoners of war. Six decades later, the remaining few were formally honored. Talk about delayed gratification.

But not Generation layZee. They want it, and they want it NOW. No one has taught them how to work toward a goal. Just the opposite, in fact--seemingly everyone in their tiny universes seemed focused on preventing even the slightest harm from ever befalling them, from scraped knees to hurt feelings.

Generation layZee is continually focused on what they do NOT have. We’ll rarely, if ever, see them thankful for a simple meal or place to sleep. They seem unable to comprehend the statistical odds that they most likely will not become the next Michael Jordan, Paul Allen or Sergey Brin. Their mommies and daddies told them they were special, dammit, and the world had better reflect that.

As they try to become the “next big thing,” Generation layZee fails in the earliest stages. They have no concept of the amount of tireless work it takes to become that, and even if they did, lack the fortitude to get there. Few, if any, ponder how many parties Michael Jordan missed in order to spend solitary hours shooting free throws. They think it “just happens.”

So they go off into the world woefully unprepared. The Casey Serins of the world want to jump in with both feet and play with the big boys. Because they’re ‘special,’ they blissfully ignore their own lack of training and experience, and seem unable to even put a value on such nebulous ideas.

When things go awry, as they always do in this world, we have the Columbine kids or the Virginia Tech shooter. I’ve been saying for years that this generation, Generation layZee, would be a generation of suicides. I did not predict that their pampering would lead to taking out as many people as they could while they go down in flames.

But whether it’s Casey Serin negatively impacting his neighbors’ finances or Cho Seung Hui depriving others of their very lives, Generation layZee only looks at how they themselves are impacted.

I wish this weren’t the case, but it’s only going to get worse. Everywhere we go, we are allowed glimpses into the future. The latest round of pseudo-parents allow their children to run wild in public, scream at the top of their lungs, and make no attempt to discipline or socialize them.

Each self-absorbed generation has managed to produce a subsequent generation that is shockingly more egocentric and spoiled than the one that came before it. If you’re a parent, you need to seriously rethink your role in creating productive members of society. If you’re thinking about becoming a parent, consider your motives for doing so.

Are you really up to the task of parenting? Or are you content to spend 18 years with a living accessory that will one day create a burden to and a drain upon society?

And to Generation layZee, I say this: Slow down and take a more thoughtful approach to your lives. Before you leap into something, can you answer the question, with absolute certainty, “How will this end?” And maybe, just maybe, after you realize that your parents and schools have failed to train you (as many generations ahead of you have done), you will take it upon yourselves to defy the odds, through actual hard work.

And if you think the world has been cruel to you up to this point, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Time to grow some callouses and thicken up the skin, kids, because life itself is a long and rocky road.

ADDITION: Aantares/Eve Community readers, please see this post.