I used to work for Marriott. We probably got more written complaints about the BoM being in the room than anything that was actually hotel related. Once a housekeeper found one that had been used as toilet paper. Ah, spirituality…
Beaten to the punch by** Q.E.D.**
Oh, you never did answer my bolded question.
You don’t have to put up with it at all.
Just patronize a hotel that doesn’t do it, that’s all.
See how great freedom is?
So what is your solution? Obviously walking 14 steps and placing the book in the hallway is too much to ask.
As others have said, if you feel that strongly about it, then refuse to stay at a hotel that allows Gideon Bibles to be placed in their rooms. Call, email, or fax the management and tell them why you won’t be coming back. Maybe they will change their policy.
On a personal note, I think an attitude like this is hurting your cause. Many Christians seem to be warming to the “live and let live” idea regarding homosexuality.
If you turn the gay cause into “lets get rid of all Bibles in hotel rooms” you are drawing a line in the sand and asking for a war. One that is entirely unnecessary.
From your same site, in regards to 20:13:
[
](http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibh3.htm)
While there may be argument about the intended meaning–i.e. whether we’re only talking about anal sex in a temple (?) or general homosexuality–its well enough understood among everyone else who doesn’t wish to torture the words that you need to reject what the Bible is saying on this point to accept homosexuality.
Okay, here’s what I do every time I find a Gideon Bible in my hotel room. On one of the blank pages at the end, I write the following verse:
Little Miss Muffet sits on her tuffet
And goes down to the ocean to spawn.
A seahorse bestride her,
An unemployed writer
A particle-board on the lawn.
If you ever see that particular bit of verse, you’ll know that I have stayed in that hotel room.
My feeling is that the equal-time provision is at work. If Mr. Gideon gets to push his particular opinion, then you have an equal right to push a contrary opinion, or subvert the dominant paradigm in any way you choose.
So go ahead, Valteron! Wield the red pen with all the vigor at your command!
As someone who has, at times, done what would be considered work on the Sabbath day, this applies as much to me as it does to you (however much that actually is). And it’s never bothered me all that much.
I just asked my spouse whether he thinks I should send the hotel a message by putting the Bible in the trash can. He said that that would be tasteless.
I said: “I didn’t ask for this shit”.
Spouse replied: “Neither did I.”
“You mean the Bible?” I asked.
“No, I mean all this drama” replied Spouse.
Okay, seriously, folks, I think some of you think “irony” is the state of containing a lot of iron.
Of COURSE I have been aware of the presence of Bibles in hotel rooms for the past 50 years or more.
But I think the presence of Bibles in hotels is part of the free ride that religion gets in our society. Religion is a source for evil and repression and I think it is time the growing number of atheists in all western societies started pushing back, ALL along the line.
Like the time CNN did a story of whether atheists are discriminated against in America.
The panel discussing the issue were all religious believers and church leaders. There was NOT an atheist among them. Can you imagine a panel about anti-black discrimination that includes no blacks?After a groundswell of protest CNN finally let the head of the American Atheist organization on for a few minutes.
Pup, in answer to your comment I answer intelligent questions. But I will answer yours to this extent. All I was saying is that “most people are Christian” is no argument.
For that matter, how many people checking into a hotel specifically ask for a Bible in their room? My guess is that 90% of people don’t give a shit one way or another. Nor would they care if there were a copy of any other useless and pointless book.
So why do Hotels agree to put them in every room? Because a group called the Gideons give them the Bibles, and because the hotels are too gutless to stand up to the tiny minority who actually want one there.
So maybe if people like me and others stand up and ask them to be removed, they will decide it is less trouble to just leave them out of the rooms and keep a few copies on hand for the maybe 2% of the population that would request one.
And organized religion would have lost one more free ride, one more unfair privilege. It is a small thing, admittedly, but everything that diminishes the power of religion makes me and my spouse safer.
Because whatever Leviticus really means, make no mistake about it. As we speak, those passages are being quoted by anti-gay legislators, or by people who murder gays in countries like Jamaica and South Africa while the police look on and laugh.
Religion is a weapon, and a loaded and dangerous one!
You seem to me to be enjoying this aspect of your vacation as much, perhaps more than any other.
Tris
Spouse sounds like a wise man. You should listen to him more.
I am well aware that namby-pamby liberal Christians have tried to reinterpret those passages and pretend they mean something else than what they say. I used to belong to the Metropolitan Community Church in my younger days and I actually wrote pamphlets explaining that Sodom and Gomorrah were NOT really about homosexuality, yadda, yadda, yadda!
As I said earlier, those bible passages are being used daily by homophobes and conservatives from the Pope to gay-bashing Jamaican thugs to anti-gay legislators.
They were used right here by religious conservatives in Alberta, Canada, to back the conservative attempt to overturn the gay marriage legislation in Canada. Happily, they did not succeed.
If we were talking about soe obscure text on an Egyptian Papyrus, it would be another matter.
But religion in our modern world is a weapon and a dangerous one. All I am proposing is a small symbolic step. I still think it is worth the fight.
I’m trying to decide whether somebody getting this threatened and angry over the presence of a Bible in a hotel room is more or less ridiculous than somebody getting this threatened an angry over the presence of Heather Has Two Mommies in a school library.
Heh.
“How was your vacation?”
“It sucked! There was a Bible in our hotel room!”
To get back at Leviticus, wear a poly/cotton blend. To feel better about Gideon Bibles, tuck (new, fresh, in the wrapper) condoms helpfully between the pages – your choice regarding book, chapter, and verse.
To what end? The passages have zero–ZERO–direct effect on you and your husband. Having the Bible there in your hotel room is doing nothing to diminish the quality of your relationship to each other, nor invalidate your feelings for one another; nor should it. The people who use the words in that book are already well aware of it, and there’s nothing you can do to stop that, I’m afraid. So, what’s the point? Unless you can get them to stop reading and believing Leviticus, you’ve accomplished nothing by your actions here.
Are you insulting me?
Not only are your words insulting, they are inaccurate. You used one position as a basis for one of your arguments, and then its exact opposite as the basis for your next. You cannot have it both ways.
I declare that this premise is flawed and demand a cite. I demand this cite based on my contention that (a) hotels do not act as a bloc; and (b) that it is either to the individual economic advantage of each hotel chain to do so; alternatively, it produces no economic loss to the chains that choose to do so.
Just who is giving “organized religion” this free ride? What “privilege” are they getting? Who is granting it to them?
Look it’s either a privilege granted or it’s market forces at work. If it’s a privilege, perhaps you should file suit for an injunction. If it’s market forces, you’re going to need a sufficient groundswell to demonstrate the economic folly of the actions.
I ask you again- WHICH IS IT?
And whatever the Gospel of Matthew means, make no mistake about it: the religious are actively ministering to the oppressed around the world, including homosexuals, who are unfairly targeted because of their sexual orientation.
What do you suggest we do about THAT horror?
What if religion is a club? Or an axe? You don’t have to load those.
What if religion is a stone? They STILL stone people, right? You don’t have to load a stone.
Is religion a gun? Like a zip gun or a derringer? Or is it like an Uzi or perhaps the more reliable M-4? Or maybe it’s a CANNON! Yeah! A Cannon! Forget that! A MACHINE CANNON! With frickin LASER BEAMS in the cannonballs! Yeah! Praise Jesus!
Since you insist on mixing apples and oranges, Thurdlow. . . . . . .
A Public Library is a place for books covering all points of view. My hotel room is a private place (MY private place while I am renting it).
Would you object to a Public Library carrying Mein Kampf? I wouldn’t.
Would you understand a Jewish couple objecting to a hotel putting copies in every room, including theirs? I would! And I would protest with them to the management.
BTW, Mein Kampf actually contains fewer specific demands that Jews be killed than the Bible contains specific demands and examples of gay people being killed (Sodom and Gomorrah, Leviticus, etc.).
Do you think hotels should give everyone a copy of Heather has Two Mommies whether they asked for it or not? I don’t. Do you think the library should carry it.? I do.
Stop using stupid analogies and we will get along better.
I apologize (with tongue in cheek of course) on behalf of all of us whose religion has made us strive to live according to such teachings as loving our neighbors as ourselves and judging not lest we be judged.
I generally do not answer your questions because your arguments tend to be a bunch of straw men that are all over the place, meaning what you think you mean I meant that you meant. It is frankly not worth the effort.
Oh, come on, admit it. You don’t even know what “straw man” means.
I’m asking you questions you can’t answer, because you can’t differentiate between what the people want and what the government empowers, simply because, since you don’t like something, it must obviously be “forced” on the great masses who surely agree with you.
If you want to say, “This is how I feel and I don’t care about your stupid logic lalalalaIcan’thearyou,” then go right ahead. But don’t pretend you have any more than that.
I used to be impressed by non-homophobic liberal Christians until I realized that they are nothing but a thin layer of fragile soil on the bedrock of conservativism that is the real nature of Christianity, from Cardinal Ratzinger, the present Pope, to the Westboro Baptist Church who picket the funeral of AIDS victims, to the MILLIONS of religious conservatives in America who are organizing as we speak to destroy any attempt at gay marriage rights.
You may be well-intentioned, Thurdlow, but that and $3 will get me a ride on the bus! 