Things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City XIX

The week in fundie . . .

1. Religion as child abuse: members of a religious cult known as the Grail Movement kept a seven-year-old boy “chained in a closet as relatives hacked off pieces of his flesh to eat.” The Grail Movement makes the Manson family sound like the Hanson family: in 2000, its spiritual leader Jiří Adam “had his followers sign all their property over to him and forced the women into hard labor on at least two of his properties.” Detectives compared the victims to Auschwitz inmates. (Via Pharyngula)
2. Anti-gay activist and quack Paul Cameron is in Russia to support the local authorities’ crackdown on gay rights marches, and welcomes the embrace of his ideas by the sociology department at Moscow State University, a school which has
   

   distributed a brochure to all students that approvingly quotes the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ blames Freemasons and Zionists for the world wars, and claims that they control U.S. and British policy and the global financial system.

   (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion)

3. The Bilerico Project reports on a gay rights supporter who collapsed at a demonstration outside San Francisco’s City Hall–to the cheers of a group of loving Christian anti-gay protestors, one of whom was chanting “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear?” (Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)
4. Religion as child abuse II: members of the Followers of Christ sect opted for faith healing and prayer over reality-based medicine, leading to the death from heart failure of a 16-year-old boy in their care. The heart failure was caused by a urinary tract blockage that could have easily been treated with a catheter. Police say that charges are unlikely to be laid, given the likelihood that the boy himself refused treatment. (Via Fundies Say the Darndest Things)
5. In Nepal, a teenage girl accused of being a witch had her clothes torn from her body and was forced to march naked around the village market, after refusing to pay a sum of 300,000 rupees (about $US 4,500) to her accusers. (Nepalnews.com)
6. In Assam, India, an entire family accused of witchcraft was stoned by their fellow villagers, then dragged into the forest and buried alive. Over 500 people accused of witchcraft have been murdered in Assam over the past few years. (Reuters)
7. In the Indian village of Janerawa, an elderly woman accused of being a witch was beaten and forced to eat her own excrement. (The Times of India)
8. According to a Gallup poll, 60% of Republicans believe humans were created in their present form by God 10,000 years ago. The same belief is shared by 40% of Independents and 38% of Democrats.