Conchobar

Clergymen Share Culpability for Mother's "Sacrifice" of Children
http://www.ffrf.org/news/index.php?n=sacrifice.html


Statement by Foundation President Anne Gaylor

Clergymen Share Culpability for Mother's "Sacrifice" of Children

May 13, 2003

This statement was released following news reports that fundamentalist mother Deanna LaJune Laney, of Tyler, Tex., has been charged with killing two of her three sons on Saturday, May 10, because "God told her to."

She is charged with bludgeoning two sons to death with rocks. A third son, 14-month-old Aaron, is in critical condition. Laney was described as a longtime church member and intensely devout woman. She is the sister-in-law of Pastor Gary Bell of the First Assembly of God in Tyler, where she was a choir member.

Rev. Bell's response: "The main thing we need is prayer." The case strongly parallels the recent tragedy involving another intensely religious Texas mother, Andrea Yates, who was convicted of drowning her children to "save" them.

Statement by Anne Gaylor, President
Freedom From Religion Foundation

When religious tragedies occur, such as those involving the devout Texas mothers who killed their children, reasonable people ask, "What went wrong?"

"How can this be avoided?"

"Can't we do something so these tragedies won't occur in the future?"

There is an answer, and that is for our society, including the press, to stop promoting "God" and the bible as truth.

Every clergyperson in America should be feeling a degree of culpability, because if it were not for the ubiquitous representation of a "god" as fact, and the bible as inerrant truth, tragedies like those in Texas could not occur.

Some mentally ill people might still do unacceptable things, but without "god" and the bible behind them, their actions could be expected to take a less lethal turn. Their mental illness could not hide behind the rationalization that "She is devoutly religious, so everything must be OK."

Both of these mothers were devout. Both were subservient wives handling childcare pressures. Interestingly, both utilized Christian home schooling for their doomed children. Both "talked to God." Both fundamentalist Christian mothers say they sacrificed their own children "for God."

In the latest case, Deanna LaJune Laney reportedly even employed a barbaric biblical method--stoning--to murder two of her children, and attempt to murder her baby. After all, Psalms 137 reassures its faithful readers: "Happy shall he be, who taketh and dasheth the little ones against the stones."

"Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes." Isaiah 13:16

"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother. . . all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die." Deuteronomy 21:18-21

"Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell." Proverbs 23:13-14

It is time for our society to recognize religion as the unreasonable and dangerous preoccupation that it is.

(The above forwarded to me by e-mail from a member of FFRF)

sakrilege

It was demons, DEMONS I say!!

Lobstrosity

Well all I know is that Gaylor heathen is going straight to hell. Is she seriously saying that we shouldn't stone unruly children in the town square? Damn hippy.

Shake

Absolutely crazy! Stories such as this bother me no end.

The older boys:

from here.Aaron is her 14-month old son.

Notice how all of the children had biblical names, too.
Hopefully, Laney will get a similar (if not stronger) sentence.

CaptainOfOuterSpace

Correction:

Fundamentalism = insanity

christ-on-a-stick

Hearing about another case like this (so similar to the Andrea Yates case) breaks my heart and makes me incredibly angry at the same time.

It strikes me as absolutely insane that in this day and age, it's still socially acceptable - in fact, respected - to encourage the kind of absurd superstitious beliefs that can inspire someone already mentally disturbed to such heinous actions.

Think about it. So, what if there was no fundamentalist Xianity teaching people that there are powerful invisible spirits (God, Satan etc.) that can and do communicate with humans and give them commands? Of course there would still be people who are mentally ill, schizophrenics etc., but wouldn't it be a bit easier to see that someone was mentally unstable when they spoke of "God talking to me" if we didn't have *sane* (?!) people walking around talking about the same thing and everybody thinking it's normal????

After the Andrea Yates question I asked my superfundy mother what she thought. She said that, well, of course she was mentally ill if she thought that Satan was commanding her through the television to commit certain acts. My question then was, if you do believe that God and Satan are real and are able to communicate with humans, then why do you automatically say that she was obviously mentally ill? How do you know that this "Satan" DIDN'T do that?

They want to have it both ways. They believe in this supernatural realm, believe that God really did speak to Abraham and test him by asking him to murder his son, but when people in the modern day claim "divine command" they brush it off as "insanity" because to do otherwise would be to admit how insane the concept of invisible spirits talking to us really is.

Conchobar

You are correct. Religion is all delusional but delusional systems alone does not make for insanity or thought disorder. Many religious people act quite sanely, work efficiently, but have delusions.

Fundamentlism is a form of mental illness, psychosis, a variety of paranoid schizophrenia. There are ideas of reference, a special relationship with a space giant, grandiosity, ambivalence (love they neighbour but really hate him as an infidel,) and delusion (supernatural belief in gods, daemons, angels etc.)

In Christian Fundamentalism I deliberately use Fundamentalism as the noun and Christian as the adjective. Fundamentalism is the Disease while Christianity is just the colouring of the delusions. Islamic Fundamentalism has Fundamentalism as the Psychotic Disease with Islam and the Quran as the colour of the delusion.

Conchobar

Deacon Doubtmonger

My theory is that there's far more to it than that. There's a recurring morbid and vicious theme I see in Christian writing: pain as virtue. Not only does Christianity seems to exalt and glorify human suffering as a path to God and Godliness, but by extension, some of its writings imply one should actually seek out pain! I can't imagine any mom not going a little bonkers at having to embrace the dreckery noted below, but as for the Yates and Laney cases, my guess is it was much easier to inflict the ultimate pain -- unmerited death -- upon their innocent kids after being expected to voluntarily embrace so much "holy" pain themselves. A random sampling from my local library:

"In his infinite wisdom, the God of the universe puts pain in the path of his creatures. This draws them closer to him, causes them to rely on his strength and not their own, and helps them focus on heaven, where there will be no pain." (Chris Fabry, *The 77 Habits of Highly Ineffective Christians*)

"What is God doing about the sin? the suffering? the selfishness? the sickness? the death? What has He done? He has given all hurting human beings the freedom to choose to turn their crosses into crowns, their hurts into halos. With our free will intact, we can choose a reaction that turns torturous negative experiences into radiant positive ones that glorify and honor God!" (Robert H. Schuller, *Turning Hurts Into Halos and Scars Into Stars* [and Farts Into Hearts ] )

[On the hope of reconciling after marital separation] "God uses pain to produce 'treasures' in us. This time of distance between the two of you may be a time of God's putting you on the potter's wheel and shaping your life through difficulty and pressure.... If you try to escape the pressure you may miss an important lesson from God." (Gary Smalley & Dr. Greg Smalley, *Winning Your Husband Back Before It's Too Late*)

And yes, Mother(fucking) Teresa picked up the same ball and ran with it: "The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection. Mother Teresa ... described a person who was in the last agonies of cancer and suffering unbearable pain. With a smile, Mother Teresa told the camera what she told this terminal patient: 'You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.' Unconscious of the account to which this irony might be charged, she then told of the sufferer's reply: 'Then please tell him to stop kissing me.'" (Christopher Hitchens, *The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice*)

And here are my favorites, from T.D. Jakes' *Woman, Thou Art Loosed*:

["Explaining" Genesis 3:16, "In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children"] "God explained that birthing comes through sorrow. Everything you bring forth comes through pain. If it didn't come through pain, it probably wasn't worth much. If you're going to bring forth -- and I'm not merely talking about babies, I'm talking about birthing vision and purpose -- you will do so with sorrow and pain."

"Push! You don't have time to cry. Push! You don't have time to be suicidal. Push! This is not the time to give up. Push, because God is about to birth a promise through you.... God has promised that if it is to come into the world, it's got to pass through you." [Easy for a guy to say! If this dink-wit experienced one-tenth of one percent of the pain of a typical contraction, he'd change his tune but good!]

"If great things came from those who never suffered, we might think that they accomplished those things of their own accord. When a broken person submits to God, God gets the glory for the wonderful things He accomplishes -- no matter how far that person has fallen." [This makes God seem rather like that pedes nurse in Texas who injected babies with succinylcholine and heparin so she could claim a hero's glory when she resuscitated them! Also: If God gets the glory for human accomplishments, why doesn't Satan get the punishment for human failings? Why is it visited on the humans themselves??? :banghead: ]

Again, this stuff is so morbid as to be suffocating. Does my theory hold enough water to walk on, or am I talking through my miter?

Deacon Doubtmonger of Denver

"War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption and the Ice Capades.... Results like these do not belong on the resume of a supreme being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude!" -- George Carlin