Holy abusive fuck sticks! A year is more than 5% of a teenagers life, to be locked up and abused for religious programming... If my parents did this to me, I'd do everything in my power to FUCKING DESTROY them afterwards. http://youtu.be/Ez7dco_C564
One thing I missed in watching the video. How old are these kids? If they're under 18, as they appear to be, they might not have effective legal recourse, because the courts are reluctant to interfere with parental rights, especially where religion is involved. Even where the "children" are legal adults, as in cases of "cult deprogramming", courts have been reluctant to interfere or call it kidnapping. So the issue the video seems to be raising is: should the courts change their attitudes on this issue. Certainly where legal adults are concerned, I'd say yes. And it's clear to me that there's emotional abuse going on even with minors. But vindicating their rights may be more difficult. There are important tradeoffs involved for a free society. Last week, I heard a presentation by a young lady who was brought up in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church, which makes the anti-gay Westboro Baptists in Kansas look like a bunch of flaming liberals. Her parents got into the church (read "cult") because they were products of broken homes, and they were looking for structure in their lives. And they got it! The group controlled virtually every aspect of the members' lives, discouraged all contact with outside groups who were "sinners" (icluding Southern Baptists), and required the kids to go to a church school operated by the cult in which all critical thought was discouraged and the kids were taught about humans and dinosaurs co-existing. Students were punished for such infractions as asking to go to the restroom without rasing an American flag. She was taught that gays are wicked, but was never told what gays were, so she was left wondering. The remarkable thing is that she survived, and although she is an atheist, as is her brother, she isn't bitter. On the subject of gays, the psychiatric guru of "reparative therapy" , the late Dr. Charles Socarides,developed the theory that male homosexuality is caused by bad parenting, especially by distant or abusive fathers. He thought that gays could be "cured" though intensive psychoanlaysis, and that it was important to cure them because they posed a threat to civilization as we know it. Ironically (but not surprisingly), his son, Richard Socarides, not only "came out" but became a leading gay rights lawyer and advocate. Dad, of course, blamed himself, since his own theory told him he was reponsible. Even with the Westboro Baptists, I heard on young man being interviewed on NPR who is gay and was raised in that church! Can you imagine?!! And another raised by the Westboro Baptists (I think a different one) has written about his abusive childhood experiences with them, and is a speaker at atheist events (he is an atheist, of course). Most of the atheists I know came from repressive religous family environments. From this, I'd put forward the hypothseis that religion is a leading cause of atheism.
Another obvious case of people calling themselves “Christian” that have no idea of what it actually means to be a Christian.
Holy shit! I just watched that entire thing. What a bunch of bullshit. That should be considered child abuse. I'm going to guess that if my parents did that (they never would) it would end in a spectacular failure. I predict that I would spend almost the entire time in that solitary "hole" for constantly setting a bad example and disrespecting them. I would probably get my ass kicked by 4 of those guys on a regular basis.
