It’s quite useful when you need to countersign a codephrase in the message sent to you by an international arms dealer who wants to buy the NOC list you just stole from CIA headquarters in a feat of acrobatics and subterfuge. It can also be used for beating a suspect under interrogation, especially since phone books have become almost non-existant. And Jason Bourne could turn it into some kind of weapon of mass destruction.
Other than that, I have no real use for it. The pages are too slick and flimsy for service as toilet paper, and I’ve read better stories in Dukes of Hazzard fan fiction. But I’ve never asked for it to be removed, and I question that anyone else has, either, except as a weak attempt at recreational outrage.
So what’s your reaction to hateful bigotry? To embrace it as part of the rich tapestry of life?
As it happens I’m anti-slavery too, I guess I just hate almost everything in the bible. I really must learn to be more tolerant and loving of those bigots, after all they are human beings too, right? Poor things. Hate the bigotry not the bigot, I guess.
In this case it has nothing to do with that. It’s about a hotel controlled by a government entity distributing bibles and appearing to favor a specific religion.
I don’t give a damn about bibles in hotel rooms and honestly had no idea it was still done, not having stayed in a hotel for at least the past 20 years. It would not bother me in any way to see one, but even as a Christian for 30 years I wouldn’t have ever required one in a hotel and these days most people could access any version of the Bible they like on their own phone. It does seem pushy, but not unexpected considering I can’t go to the grocery store without someone inviting me to their church or passing me a pamphlet or sticking a flyer on my car.
Christians can be rather pushy though, can’t they? They have special advantages already. I have to deal with Christians and their expectation that everyone at the meeting bow their heads for their “in Jesus name” prayers running the PTA at my kid’s school. They knock on my door at least once a week or leave something on my front door, and that really pisses me off because it gets my roommate’s dogs worked up. They invite my child to all sorts of “fun and prizes” afterschool clubs and send out flyers through the school inviting kids to parties at their churches. But it’s okay because they’re Christians. If Muslims started doing this there would be protests in the streets. But because Christians are the majority the rest of us just suck it up and either keep our mouths shut or we protest and get labeled as troublemakers.
Why does it matter to YOU that atheists don’t want Bibles in their hotel room? Is it really that big a deal even if they stop putting them there? Won’t people just learn to bring their own or use their own electronic devices? Do you think they save lives by providing hope for those at the end of their rope? What was the original point of those Bibles? To save lives? Or to save ‘souls’?
I’ve always found Gideon Bibles in hotel/motel rooms to be annoying, because I once read somewhere that hookers listed their phone numbers inside the cover or first couple of pages, and I never found any such listings.
I would probably go to the front desk and demand either a different room or advise I’m not staying at that hotel if there’s devil worship garbage in the room.
I’d love to find out who the Jack Chick of the Satanist tract genre is. Some terrified woman in Heaven saying “But I killed goats every week and drank the blood of babies!” and the faceless God saying “But you didn’t believe in Satan with your heart and now you’re mine! FOREVER! HAW HAW HAW!”
