Ebola As The New AIDS: Will The Wrath-Of-God Syndrome Ever Be Cured?

"Ebola is a plague. Liberians have to pray and seek God’s forgiveness over the corruption and immoral acts (such as homosexualism, etc.) that continue to penetrate our society.” Liberian Council of Churches.

“God does not exist to give us what we want, and if killing off our loved ones is going to help us realize this, then this is what He will do.”

It seems incomprehensible to the rest of reasoning civilization - especially after the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic - that people believe plagues are the "wrath of God." Incomprehensibility, however, often has a hard time coming to grips with reality: in an age that still includes Charismatics and Fundamentalists, the "Wrath of God" is as definite as death. 

WOGS

Of course, many people see this kind of belief system as a kind of disease in itself - so let's call it WOGS, or "Wrath-Of-God Syndrome." WOGS is prevalent among the uneducated, the absolutists, the terminally isolated from reason and is spread by the righteously arrogant religious - often pastors - who need to instill fear to gain control.

The prevalence of WOGS is everywhere and certainly exists in "civilized" America:

Major Warning! Proof God’s About To Pour Out His Wrath: Ebola, TB, Psalm 83 War, Blood Moon Tetrad, Mark of the Beast, NWO, and More Stunning Evidence.

- a recent post on Before It's News

But while many people laugh at it, WOGS is certainly a threat to humanity, perhaps far greater than Ebola.

Origins: Is The Congo The Root Of All Evil? Did The Apes Sin?

Ebola, like AIDS, has now been labeled a "gay" disease in the sense that the country that accepts homosexuality is sinful. No matter where AIDS originated, it MUST have had something to do with homosexuality.

In an analysis of the genetic history of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, the scientists said the global pandemic almost certainly began its global spread in the 1920s in Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Certain researchers have claimed that the AIDS virus began first in primates.* So who were the sinners in this WOGS thesis - gay monkeys or gay Congolese? Yes, it may seem quite disrespectful to put a terrible disease in such a light, but the real disrespect lies in the people who proselytize WOGS - in their disrespect for humanity. 

Researchers also point to the same area - and some of the same primates - as the origin of ebola, with primates being the hosts of the disease. 

Poor Africa, the hotbed of sin and disease.

Ebola As A Weapon - "It's Obama's/Gays'/Liberalism's Fault"

"All the world needs to know that sodomy and homosexuality is more deadly than the ebola virus that is spreading all over the world. Everybody who stands up and embraces sodomy, BE THOU CURSED WITH EBOLA! Cursed be ye for embracing this!" - Pastor James Manning of ATLAH World Missionary Church (Harlem)

Ebola - like AIDS - is now being used as the weapon du jour for many of the Christian Right. No matter that Jesus would have been more sympathetic and forgiving than His Father, GOD WILL STRIKE YOU! And it is being used as a political weapon as well: a hot-button issue to charge President Obama with everything from willful negligence to "intentionally bringing in Ebola to make America more like Africa." (Phyllis Schlafly). Pundits like Ann Coulter** and Donald Trump have shunned compassion for Ebola victims and made medical teams look feeble. 

Ann Coulter's answer to the immigration crisis:

“First thing I would do is infect every one of those kids with the ebola virus,” she told host Sean Hannity. “The reason why people come to this country is because the government gives illegal immigrants free goodies like welfare.
“I say we give them a free case of hemorrhagic fever instead. If we pump every illegal child in this country full of ebola, parents would think twice before sending their kids to U.S. shores."

Seems like the "Wrath of God" has turned into the Wrath of Man/Coulter.

Will WOGS Ever Be "Cured"?

Education as the cure to the Wrath-Of-God Syndrome may seem too simplistic: after all, it has not yet rid the world of superstition, nor has it entirely coaxed man away from the unreasoning side of what we call "human nature." It has made small dents in the armor of Fundamentalist religion, but can it prove enough to stem the current tide? 

Then again, education is our only hope. 

Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason.

William R. Alger

*The Christian Right interpreted that speculation as a gay airline steward having sex with a monkey. 
** OpEdNews 8-8

Last Week in Bigotry: From Cursing Gays With Ebola To Righteously Phoning In Pain To A Grieving Mother

Note: Some parts of this article are NSFW

The conflagration in Ferguson, Missouri (perhaps rightfully) overshadowed other incidents of racism and bigotry in the country last week. Michael Brown's death and the subsequent reactions by Ferguson and law enforcement have been news fodder for every media:  everyone seems to taking a polarizing stance, with very few pundits in the media taking a moderate tone. For example, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson* of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny called Brown a "thug" just like Trayvon Martin.

Rev. Peterson is African-American.

Right Wing Watch

"I've said from day one that Michael Brown is a thug," Peterson declared, using as evidence "the fact that he was running from the cops, period, because good folks do not run from police officers, they follow their instructions."

Rev. Peterson has obviously never lived in an inner city.

Of course, we all know that Michael Brown was really a "menacing" giant hopped up on marijuana because Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association says so. But there were moments when Christian pastors (not Christian enough for Fischer) who participated in protests risked arrest and one Christian minister was shot with a rubber bullet trying to mediate.

The Callousness Of It All

But there were other incidents of racism and bigotry, maybe not as notorious as Ferguson, but just as damning ... and callous.

Yes, Pastor James David Manning is still with us in Harlem, spewing hatred via the Word of God (in itself, blasphemous, but Manning certainly doesn't see it that way). He added Ebola for good measure later on in one of his broadcasts.

Not to be outdone in the realm of the callous, Rev. T.W. Jenkins told the mother of a young man that his church would not bury her son because he was gay - over the phone while she was next to her son's casket at the wake the night before.

Huffington Post:

Kendall Capers found no hope at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church after the death of his husband, Julion Evans, who died at age 42 from amyloidosis. Evans' family are members of the New Hope congregation in Tampa, Florida, and Capers arranged to have the service there.

However, the funeral was abruptly canceled the night before it was scheduled to happen. The family was informed with a phone call from New Hope that said that it would be "blasphemous" to hold the service at the church, reported KCCI.

The cancellation came after members of New Hope noticed Evans' obituary, which named Capers as the "surviving husband," according to WFLA.

Bill to stone gays to death introduced in Kenya

Yes, it's actually on the docket. Kenya has yet to learn from its African neighbor, Uganda, what the consequences are for showing such medieval inhumanity. The idea, of course, was imported from the U.S., but Rev. Scott Lively disavows any involvement.

Anti-abortion Bigotry Tunes In On Robin Williams' Death

From RH Reality Check:

"Kevin Burke [contributor, Pro-Life News]drew the card this week with a repugnant attempt to blame the suicide of comedian and actor Robin Williams Monday on, you guessed it, abortion. ...In the article, Burke focuses on the fact that Williams had a girlfriend in the 1970s that had an abortion, which Williams brought up in a Playboy interview in 1992. From this information, Burke wildly speculates that pretty much every sad or bad thing that happened to Williams was because of this abortion....The fact that Williams was unabashedly pro-choice is also rationalized away in a nasty manner..."

Oh, the lengths to which people will go ...

Bigotry Gone Viral

The following video is certainly NSFW and probably the most virulent anti-Muslim rant to go viral. It spawned a plethora of shocking comments, but it may have spawned a social media star: her name, Debra Wilkerson has become synonymous with hatred and so has given birth to some supportive video responses. The one below may be a parody, of course, but there are still people out there who actually believe that the victim of Debra's hate could have been a terrorist because he was Muslim. (This did, of course, happen in the state of Alaska where one former governor espoused waterboarding as baptism). 

Since the video has gone viral in only the last 48 hours (1.2 million views), there is no word from Debra as to how she is dealing with the notoriety. While some say she was under the influence of something other than pure hate, any explanation for this kind of behavior would be considered lame. "The crazy racist lady" may be in hiding for some time. 

Hatred No Longer In Hiding

Thanks to technology and the openness of social media, hatred has been hard to hide: responses to bigotry like the Ferguson situation are vivid and immediate. Cover-ups are more difficult. Tempers are shown as raw and unrelenting. Even politicians have to be very, very careful of what they do and say: the ones that don't care (like Sarah Palin), pay the price in scorn and humiliation while trying for their "niche". 

The only thing we have to fear today is becoming numb to the bombardment of hatred that still fills the country. 






From Wikipedia:

On September 21, 2005, Peterson penned a column for WorldNetDaily, in which he suggested the majority of the African-American people stranded in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina were "welfare-pampered", "lazy" and "immoral". ... Peterson has also thanked "God and white people" for slavery—adding that if it weren't for the slave trade, blacks might have never made it to the United States—and described traveling on slave ships as akin to "being on a crowded airplane".[8]

Forget EBOLA: The Greatest Threat To Africa's Medical Missionaries Is Ann Coulter!

“If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia,” Coulter wrote in a column.

It's easy to take cheap shots at Ann Coulter these days: Ann Coulter is without a soul. Ann Coulter is heartless. Ann Coulter is evil. Ann Coulter is ... Ann Coulter. "Coultergeist." "Skeletor." OK, this writer has done it because, well, it's easy. Yes, making fun of Ann Coulter is the liberal's easy way of pointing the finger at the Right's misuse of tragedy or disaster. She's the b*tch counterpart to God's Ambulance Chasers. Of course, she doesn't heap Bibles on disaster victims, just disdain on them for being victims in the first place and anyone helping them - causing "dependency." If she is a compassionate mood at all, she might give a victim a used copy of one of her books (it having been paid for, thus no good for more royalties).


That Ann Coulter is one hell of a publicity hound there is no doubt: if you see her on any program outside of FOX News (she lives, apparently, under Sean Hannity's desk) you know that she has a new book to sell. Her outrageous comments are only fueled by the amount of publicity they get, from 9/11 widows who have "so much fun being victims" to tweets about having a "Fathers disowning their Son's Day" (after National Coming Out Day), to mocking Michele Obama's plea for the safe return of the Nigerian girls ("We want our country back."). So it's easy to look at Coulter's latest mockery in disgust as just another publicity grab.

Missionary Position

The grab, however, may have been a bit overreaching this time because her mockery was aimed at the heart of her own self-professed religion: Christianity. And not just any Christianity, but Evangelical Christianity and its missionaries: Dr. Kent Brantly was part of Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse. If Coulter had mocked Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing, she could not have picked a more overtly Christian missionary team to add to her list of enemies. She also compounded her anti-Semitism by insinuating that Hollywood was controlled by Jews who needed to be saved (or rather, "perfected").

Missionaries have always been prey for satirists, depicted as extremely upright and holier-than-thou. The position of Missionaries during times of stress, however stodgy, has always been looked upon as noble and human in the face of adversity (think Katherine Hepburn's Rose Sayer in African Queen). Attacking medical missionaries in any way, is particularly galling, since saving lives (as well as souls) and alleviating suffering was what Jesus Christ did.

Ann Coulter's own missionary position, however, is that opposition to missionaries means publicity. She considers herself, after all, a provocateur. But now even Evangelicals consider calling her something else. Her manner of converting or "perfecting" people seems to involve looking at a loaded revolver rather than hearing the Word of God. No one has told her that forced conversions went out with Queen Isabella and her minion, Torquemada.

But perhaps to Ann Coulter, Publicity is the real God, with book sales being the reward of Publicity's Prosperity Gospel. Poor Ann. Poor greedy, deluded Ann.

Is Ann Coulter Worth The Effort?

Writing about the latest Coulter outrage may seem to be futile since even her supporters know the obvious: Coulter is for Coulter is for Coulter is for Coulter. But oddly enough, she does have followers/readers who live vicariously through her outrage and mockery: most of them do not dare to enact her opinions for fear of seeming too un-Christian or inhuman. Still others, like Pastor James Manning, take comfort that her grabs at publicity overshadow his, or make him sound like more of a cartoon than a Conservative provocateur:

Manning goes on to call on God to give ebola to all homosexuals and their supporters. "All the world needs to know that sodomy and homosexuality is more deadly than the ebola virus that is spreading all over the world. Everybody who stands up and embraces sodomy, BE THOU CURSED WITH EBOLA! Cursed be ye for embracing this!"

Yes, the furthest of the religious "wingnuts" are in fact overshadowed by Coulter (who, by the way, never derides them): sheltered by her outrageous comments in the form of immediate dismissal by the mainstream media.

Yes, a "provocateur" is always worth the effort to focus upon when one knows the people she is provoking.