Hate literature placed in my hotel room by the Gideons....what should I do?

The BBQ Pit
301

[QUOTE= Musicat]
It’s satire, folks, satire. Valteron’s not stupid, and he’s not a raving lunatic.
[/QUOTE]

Are all his other “debates” satire?

Because this one is indistinguishable from the others.

Taken alone, there might have been a noticeable difference of opinion in the satire/not satire debate.

But, as was said before, you have to consider the source.

Valteron’s habit of posting whiny, persecution-complex-fueled vitriol disguised as debate is well-documented. He has never strayed from it even to offer an ounce of self-awareness, and he has never posted anything BUT bigoted, ignorant screed against religion.
I have serious differences of opinion with Der Trihs regarding religion, but he makes contributions to other parts of the board, offers insight that I don’t have from my own perspective (even if I find the delivery method harsh at times), and, while I don’t think we’d be able to have a beer together, I like the fact that he’s a part of these boards.

Valteron, on the other hand? Not only would I not be able to have a beer with him- he’d probably clear out the whole damn bar and scream insults at the patrons as they left, just because somebody flipped past EWTN on the way to the Met game.

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[QUOTE=Musicat]
…using the vehicle of satire…
[/QUOTE]

Yes, well, he appears to be operating it under the influence.

303

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]
Valteron, on the other hand? Not only would I not be able to have a beer with him- he’d probably clear out the whole damn bar and scream insults at the patrons as they left, just because somebody flipped past EWTN on the way to the Met game.
[/QUOTE]

First of all, “satire” does not mean I am not trying to make a serious point. I just thought everyone was intelligent enough to understand that I was not really just discovering the presence of Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms after 60 years of living on this planet.

I thought everyone was intelligent enough to understand that I really do know that I am free to ask the hotel to remove the Bible. So my request for “advice” on what to do was really more a sollicitation of viewpoints on the appropriateness of hotels automatically including Bibles in each room that cater to persons of many religious viewpoints. I really, honestly thought you could figure that out.

And yes, I DO think much of the Bible contains hate-inciting passages, and I challenge the naive assumption of the Gideons and of hotel managers that this is an inoffensive book chock full of nothing but goodness that everyone should have in their room whether they asked for it or not.

I think it is a book filled with cruelty that has been used to justify everything from genocide to witch-burning to slavery.

Finally, when it comes to insults Hero Pup, would you care to review this thread and count how many have been leveled at me (fucking asshole, whining bitch, batshit crazy, to name but a few) and then count how many times I have directed like insults to others on this thread? And yet I am the one who would clear the bar with my tirade of insults?

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[QUOTE=Valteron]
Thank you for that contribution. It is a well-established rule of debate and discussion that the person who uses the most obscenities and personal abuse in their comments is the one who is right. So you are obviously correct. And since I have used none, I am obviously wrong.
[/QUOTE]

Way to avoid the gist of the words, you whiny little punk. Just what one might expect of you.

305

Just for the sake of it –

[QUOTE=Musicat]
Some other things we need to start thinking about are: accepting “In God We Trust” on money and government venues (it’s posted in my local courthouse)
[/quote]

The usual argument for this is that most of the country believes in at least one god of some type. I don’t think the motto is necessary – I don’t think God cares what we print on our money, and render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s and all that – but even before my conversion it seemed like such a picayune thing to waste time wondering about.

I suppose it depends on the company, but I know I find it hurtful when people insult what I believe in quite strongly. Discussion is one thing, but it never stops there, and it’s generally not polite to offend your company.

Generally I find that people who want to ‘discuss the absurdities of religion’ – at least, the people I know – start with making mockery of something to do with religion. Celibate or pedophilic priests, the weird stuff in Leviticus, the hallucinatory imagery of Revelations, the “oh so she was a virgin, huh?” jokes about Mary… stuff like that. Or they’ll start going on about the structure of the church. At lunch one day, my boss started talking about how the Pope could get up and tell everyone that blue was an evil color that nobody should wear and then no Catholics would wear blue. What he meant as a joke turned into a reasoned discussion with a Catholic coworker and my Episcopalian self.

So yes, sometimes they actually stay reasoned discussions. More often they end up in insults, shouting matches, and similar. Generally nobody on either side is particularly educated in the other side’s dogma and is not inclined to listen to it, especially after the yelling starts.

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[QUOTE= Valteron]
First of all, “satire” does not mean I am not trying to make a serious point. I just thought everyone was intelligent enough to understand that I was not really just discovering the presence of Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms after 60 years of living on this planet.

I thought everyone was intelligent enough to understand that I really do know that I am free to ask the hotel to remove the Bible. So my request for “advice” on what to do was really more a sollicitation of viewpoints on the appropriateness of hotels automatically including Bibles in each room that cater to persons of many religious viewpoints. I really, honestly thought you could figure that out.
[/QUOTE]

No, YOU don’t get it.

We’re all intelligent enough to understand what satire is.

The problem with YOU is that, given your posting history, it is significantly more likely that you are not being satirical, but serious, because you have never been anything BUT serious before, in threads equally ridiculous. So no one believes you when you assert, a few pages into a thread where you are being rightfully castigated, that you were just joking and that we’re all too dumb to see it.

And I haven’t insulted you, Valteron. I have described you.
You really don’t understand, do you? You have established yourself here, by your own actions, as a whiny drama-queen who goes out of his way to be offended at absolutely nothing of consequence, and then to shrilly proclaim the fact that you are offended to the entire board, pausing only accuse those who disagree with you of being bigoted, closed-minded, unintelligent, or some combination thereof.

You have no reason to act surprised when (even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that you accumulated enough self-awareness to write satirically) everyone just assumes that it’s Valteron being the same old Valteron.

You made your bed and now you don’t wanna lie in it. Waaaaah.

Why don’t you start another Pit thread about that?

But hey, at least Jesus still loves you, even if everyone else thinks you’re a jerk.

Oh, and if you’re seriously attempting to say “I thought everyone here was intelligent enough to understand me” is NOT an insult, then you’re not only whiny but even more unintelligent than originally hypothesized.

307

Out of curiosity, I went looking for this book by this Hitler fellow that Valteron keeps going on and on about. I think I found it, but there is no synopsis, can anyone tell me what’s so bad about it? :stuck_out_tongue:

308

[QUOTE=Happy Scrappy Hero Pup]
But hey, at least Jesus still loves you, even if everyone else thinks you’re a jerk.
[/QUOTE]

Not to support the jerk in any way, but I believe that making this sort of comment to a known atheist is also pretty close to jerkdom.

309

[QUOTE=Frank]
Not to support the jerk in any way, but I believe that making this sort of comment to a known atheist is also pretty close to jerkdom.
[/QUOTE]
I dunno. I have never supported those Christians who are utterly offended when someone begins to make references to the IPU or FSM, but I don’t see where telling a strident atheist that Jesus loves him or her is more jerklike than the typical IPU or FSM or “Bronze Age Thunder God” reference–and this is the Pit.

310

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
I dunno. I have never supported those Christians who are utterly offended when someone begins to make references to the IPU or FSM, but I don’t see where telling a strident atheist that Jesus loves him or her is more jerklike than the typical IPU or FSM or “Bronze Age Thunder God” reference–and this is the Pit.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t get offended by comments from people - “I’ll pray for you,” and the like - by people who don’t know my beliefs. I do get offended when the comments are made by those who do know my beliefs.

shrug Maybe it’s just me.

311

There is an interesting question here. A large proportion of small highway motels are owned or operated by Indian-Americans, a very large proportion of them Hindu Gujaratis (hence, the frequency of the name “Patel” amongst motel operators).

Here are my assumptions:

(1) A Patel motel operator is unlikely to have any specific interest in providing bibles to its guests.

(2) The vast majority of hotel guests wouldn’t miss the Gideon had it not been there.

My theory is that the Patels, being a small minority of the country’s population, and many being recent immigrants, simply allow the Gideons to distribute their bibles in order to avoid rocking the cultural boat. In other words, there’s a variety of social coercion at play here.

312

[QUOTE=acsenray]
In other words, there’s a variety of social coercion at play here.
[/QUOTE]
Unless there is some reluctance on the part of these motel operators to simply allow the Gideons to deliver free bibles, I don’t see the element of coercion. They probably let the local travel bureau stock brochures on the front desk and in the rooms, as well. Those are both innocuous gestures that will please some small percent of the customer base and fail to offend all but .00000002% of the rest of the customer base.

313

tomndebb writes:

> . . . all but .00000002% of the rest of the customer base . . .

.00000002% = .0000000002 = 2 in 10,000,000,000 = 1 in 5,000,000,000, so unless Valteron is the only person in the world who has ever been offended by this, I don’t think that’s true.

314

[QUOTE= Wendell Wagner]
.00000002% = .0000000002 = 2 in 10,000,000,000 = 1 in 5,000,000,000, so unless Valteron is the only person in the world who has ever been offended by this, I don’t think that’s true.
[/QUOTE]

Don’t rule that possibility out.

315

[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner]
I don’t think that’s true.
[/QUOTE]
You’re right. I accidentally typed an extra zero.

316

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Unless there is some reluctance on the part of these motel operators to simply allow the Gideons to deliver free bibles, I don’t see the element of coercion. They probably let the local travel bureau stock brochures on the front desk and in the rooms, as well. Those are both innocuous gestures that will please some small percent of the customer base and fail to offend all but .00000002% of the rest of the customer base.
[/QUOTE]

My hypothesis, which, yeah, is entirely speculative, is that if it were entirely up to them, Hindu Gujaratis would prefer not to stock bibles in all their guest rooms and they don’t view them exactly the same way as travel brochures. If you accept that, then coercion is almost necessary for things to come out the way they do.

317

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
. . . . . fail to offend all but .00000002% of the rest of the customer base.
[/QUOTE]

What I am offended by is that automatically putting a bible in every hotel room is tantamount to telling me that this is some sort of wonderful book just chock full of goodness that everybody should read, because it is not just a book, it is the Word of God.

It is like adding “In God we Trust” to public, secular objects like money. It is a question of respect for the feelings of ALL individuals, including atheists.

Since satire and irony seem to go over the heads of some people, let me get down to brass tacks here. No, I do not HAVE to get offended by such things. All of you are 100% right to say that. I will be going to the US this summer and I can have a perfectly wonderful vacation even with a bunch of papers that say “In God We Trust” stuffed in my wallet.

But it is an undeniable fact that every Christian and every theist can just as easily make use of US Money that does NOT refer to God or enjoy a stay at a hotel without there being a Gideon Bible in the drawer. If you want a book to read while you are at the hotel, do what people do for every other book on Earth. Bring it with you. I brought a copy of “Why I am Not a Christian” and other essays by Bertrand Russell to my hotel. I did not ask the hotel to put a copy in every room. And I strongly suspect that if I DID buy a few thousand copies and offer them to hotels, I would get VERY few takers. Why? Because the hotel would be afraid of “offending people”. Of course, if I am offended, I am a “whiny bitch”.

And PLEASE do not bother to respond that hotels are private enterprises that have a right to do so. That is not a contested issue here.

The fact is that the automatic presence of a Bible whose many cruel, violent, sexist, homophobic and inhuman passages I consisder to be hate literature, as well as the presence of “In God We Trust” on the money are nothing more than a symbollic act of the theist majority putting their foot on the necks of non-believers and telling us to remember that we do not really count. They are no more “necessary” than it is “necessary” for me to be offended by them.

318

Are you going to sing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life now?

319

Here is an interesting quote from Paul Edwards, an editor of *Why I am Not a Christian * by Bertrand Russell, who says in his introduction:

“. . . the religious offensive has not been restricted to propaganda on a grand scale. It has also assumed the shape of numerous attempts, many of them successful, to undermine the secular character of the United States. These attempts are too many to be detailed here; but perhaps two or three illustrations will sufficiently indicate the disturbing trend which, if it remains unchecked, will make those who are opposed to traditional religion into second-class citizens.”

Now, while I was aware that Bertrand Russell wrote those essays in the 1950s, the glossy-covered book I was reading was obviously a recent printing and I assumed that Paul Edwards was going to go on with a few examples of attempts to reintroduce school prayer, put the ten commandments in court houses, teach creationism, give tax money to faith-based charities, demands that candidates express their faith, etc.

Imagine my surprise upon finding that Edwards’ introduction was written in 1956! And that the examples he gives are “. … (in 1956). . . .a subcommittee of the House of Representatives included in a Concurrent Resolution the amazing proposition that “loyalty to God” is an essential qualification for the best government service… . . . . . . . Another resolution making ‘In God we Trust’ the the national motto of the United States has been passed by both Houses and is now the law of the land. Professor George Axtelle, of New York University, (referred to these moves before a Senate Committee) as ‘tiny but significant erosions’ of the principle of church-state separation.”

This was over 50 years ago! As we all know, erosion is a slow, gradual process, that goes on year after year. And since each individual change is so tiny in itself, it is very easy to qualify those who complain as “whiny bitches” getting upset over nothing.

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[QUOTE=Valteron]
What I am offended by is that automatically putting a bible in every hotel room is tantamount to telling me that this is some sort of wonderful book just chock full of goodness that everybody should read, because it is not just a book, it is the Word of God.
[/QUOTE]

I had no idea the Yellow Pages were so important!