One of Them: Part IV

April 30, 2015 • 6:38 am

Wiley Miller continues his series on America’s Hate Laws at Non Sequitur. (Why does that old dude have a cat on his shoulder?)

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Reader “Micky pearce” (who won’t be seen here in the future) tried to comment on this post, demonstrating precisely the kind of religiously-inspired bigotry shown in the strip:

This is unfair freind. Who wrote that. Not accurate complete picture. pro-gay businesses have rejected Christian approaches too. If homosexuals are wicked enough to approach and target Christian businesses instead of the hundreds of others who would happily fulfil their requirements, seeking trouble and the imposition of their agenda upon others, who really is the uncharitable and divisive party at work here. Bigotry works in all spheres, including the refusal to accept someones Christian position.

Is there a correlation between conservative religiosity and the inability to write and spell?

h/t: Linda Grilli

66 thoughts on “One of Them: Part IV”

  1. When I first saw the first cartoon, I thought “them” were atheists. The cat was a dead giveaway (I thought).

    /@

    * Or a <live|dead> giveaway, if it were Schrödinger’s cat.

    1. ‘Them’ is, you know, any one who isn’t chosen. Atheists, communists, devil worshippers, Hindus, the wrong sort of Christian… they’re all going to hell.

        1. Isn’t Ailurophiles one of Mephistophiles’ fellow Demons of the Pit?

    2. It’ll be interesting to see whether Wiley does a reveal on that at the end of the series, or leaves it ambiguous. I’m predicting he leaves it ambiguous. After all, the point here is that ‘we don’t serve your type’ is ugly and bigoted practically regardless of what ‘type’ refers to.

        1. Well, the strip itself would seem to indicate its nothing about theism or atheism: the visitors’ animus appears to be against “people who own cats” or possibly “people who carry their cats around.” Which is sufficiently arbitrary that helps drive the point home about how ridiculous such bigotry is.

  4. So, where is this gay bakery that refused to bake a Jesus cake? Or was it that incident where the guy wanted fetus cakes baked with some angry bible verses on them, which the bakery refused and instead offered to bake him bible cakes and give him a bag of frosting so he could write whichever verses he wanted on them?

    1. My spell checker automatically changes fre ind to friend, too. Which makes you wonder what platform Mickey pearce is using.

  7. “Is there a correlation between conservative religiosity and the inability to write and spell?”

    It sure seems that way. There is also the old trope about a correlation between religious fervor and personal hygiene, the more fervent the smellier. It does seem plausible in my experience. Somebody should do a study on these things.

    1. St. Francis was apparently quite a smelly dude, even relative to the standards of the day.

      I always find grammatically and logically challenged postings to be profoundly depressing. I occasionally write letters to the editor, and not on particularly controversial topics, and I’m always amazed at the hyper-angry, hyper-illiterite comments that appear on-line. Are angry, sub-literate people a large fraction of the newspaper-reading audience?

  8. “Is there a correlation between conservative religiosity and the inability to write and spell?”

    For years I have noticed a specific correlation between conservation/Christian attitudes and the inability to use the apostrophe.

    And NO, I AM NOT JOKING. Someone needs to do a study.

    1. My writing is terrible, so I can’t really comment on others.

      Also tomorrow is the closing date for postal and special voters registration in Ireland. May 5th is the last day to register for the upcoming referendum, to vote in person.

    2. Writing and spelling can be improved by reading a lot. You would think believers read their holy books, but studies have shown time and again that believers barely know their own bible or quran. Not as well as atheists in any case.

      Jews are an exception, they perform only slightly worse than atheists, but in general they know their holy books well. Mormons are in third place.

      source: http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-who-knows-what-about-religion/

      1. “Writing and spelling can be improved by reading a lot.”

        This is critical, especially the first point.

        If you haven’t read (a lot of) good writing, how could you produce your own?

        1. Are there apostrophes in the Bible? My dimly-remembered impression is that it isn’t written in good modern English anyway. (Though my recollection may not be that good as I’ve avoided the wretched thing for the past 50+ years).

          1. Probably written in King James’ finest early 17th Century English. Or was it late C.17? Closer to Shakespeare than us, by a considerable margin.

          2. Oddly enough, I could accept Shakespeare’s plays on their own terms. They were, after all, much better plotted, more coherent and better written and no-one tried to sell them as being relevant to today’s affairs in anything but a metaphorical sense.

      2. There could certainly be something to that.

        If they aren’t even reading the book they claim is most important to them, then what are the chances they’re doing much other reading?

    3. I would guess that the omission of punctuation marks is indicative of smart phone use or age more than theological position. But it could be that most conservative religious posters are relatively young, or surf the web on smart phones rather than full size keyboard + monitor.

      2. As Beefy music implies, the deficit of spelling, punctuation and grammar amongst the drooling-and-spraying-bile classes, including the religious, far pre-dates the advent of the smart phone. We had these humanoids on CI$ in the mid-90s, before I had a mobile phone, and CI$ was an island of sanity compared to some places (AOL, I’m looking at you!)

    4. If the correlation between conservative religiosity and the inability to spell and write does exist, then my guess is that this might in part be caused by the lack of peer-group pressure to ‘sound educated’ when you write things on the internet. People tend to match their styles to the forums they frequent.

      Back when I used to hang out on IRC I noticed that the chatrooms devoted to “praise and worship” welcomed all expressions of the right sentiment, regardless of how sloppy it was. There was no negative feedback for the grammatically challenged. Simple faith. Simple values. Simple minds. You can educate yourself right out of a relationship with God. Don’t worry about how well you write: Jesus loves you all the same and so do we. Proper punctuation and diction are therefore not worth the effort.

      Pull that lackadaisical stuff in the debate rooms though and devout Christian or not you lose respect. You’re supposed to think sharp and sound sharp. The blunt writers therefore either left or quickly shaped up.

      1. Besides, it seems like in America there’s a big suspicion of education among the religious right anyway. Santorum and Huckabee are currently going on about the need to battle the “secular theocracy” of the Dems! I kid you not.

  9. “You know, this is, excuse me, a damn fine cup of coffee.”

    By the way, what is the accent of the sassy waitress?

  10. Funny how those braying about religious freedom blocked the freedom of the Unitarians, most Jewish congregations, and other religions to offer a true religious marriage to their gay members. A true religious marriage is a civil marriage followed by a religious ceremony. Without the civil part, the couple is not married.

  11. Of course there is a correlation between religiosity and spelling/grammar. It’s called education. The studies were done. I won’t link here because a google search reveals a trove of studies.

  12. If homosexuals are wicked enough to approach and target Christian businesses…

    IF that happened, they would still be acting within the law and you’d still have to serve them.

    Moreover, I wouldn’t even call it a jerk move (on the activists’ part), I would support them. Just as it wasn’t a jerk move for blacks in the civil rights era to specifically target restaurants who wouldn’t serve them at the counter for walk-ins and sit-ins.

    who really is the uncharitable and divisive party at work here

    Again, not important as you still have to serve customers who you think are ‘uncharitable and divisive.’

    Bigotry works in all spheres, including the refusal to accept someones Christian position.

    I accept that you may have that position. I accept your right to voice it. I even accept your right to live that position when doing so is not illegal. But when a religious belief bumps heads with a secular law, the secular law wins.

    1. Hmmm…”anonymous” is me. I have no idea what happened but I certainly wasn’t trying to sockpuppet. My apologies.

  13. pro-gay businesses have rejected Christian approaches too

    What does that even mean? As in, what is the Christian approach to… what? I’m not seeing what the writer is getting at.

    Is he saying that pro-gay businesses have refused to serve Christians? I didn’t even know there were “pro-gay” businesses. I just called them, you know, normal businesses.

    1. He might have been referring to this. I believe that case has already been settled and the baker won in court. Reason: she applies her message standard consistently for all customers (i.e., she doesn’t do “x hates x” messages, regardless of the x’s and regardless of the customer). However, my brief googling didn’t turn up the denouement so I had to link to an earlier one instead. Sorry.

      OTOH, he might have been referring to his own vague or imagined martyrdom scenarios.

    2. Yes, the Xian martyrdom syndrome in the US.

      We had a lengthy kerfuffle locally here about bullying. The Xians were bullying gay kids in high school. (There were a few incidents of suicide — hard pin that on specific acts of bullying; but it’s reasonable to assume a hostile environment was a contributing factor.)

      The Xian position was: You are oppressing me because I am being preventing from attacking people who my faith tells me I should abhor. (Where does that argument stop — do conservative Jews get to impose Old Testament punishments on their neighbors and family?)

      You will see this again and again.

      Oh, us poor Xians, we can’t throw our weight around like we used — we’re being oppressed! Wah, wah, wah!

      1. The Xian position was: You are oppressing me because I am being preventing from attacking people who my faith tells me I should abhor.

        That is, if I recall my history of America correctly, precisely the religious freedom that the Mayflower Bigots left Britain in the hope of pursuing in the Brave New World.

        1. They enjoyed a fair measure of success, too. I’m reading John Clees’ biog ‘So, Anyway’ and he mentions, re Boston: “In one cemetery I strayed into (I enjoy a nice graveyard now and then) I found the 1660 tombstone of a Quaker who had been hanged for heresy by the Puritans. I’d always thought that the Mayflower crowd had invaded New England to establish religious tolerance, but I suppose they must have decided that you can have too much of a good thing. After all, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. God knows what would have happened if those God-fearing people had caught a Catholic. All they would have then needed was a couple of witches and an agnostic and they would have head enough entertainment for an entire weekend.”

          He is being a little bit savage but then, I think the narrow-minded bastards deserved it.

          1. After all, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. God knows what would have happened if those God-fearing people had caught a Catholic

            Again, stretching at my knowledge of Merkin history, but I’m pretty sure there were cases. ISTR that there was a considerable dispute between some of the Colonies over whether they should be executed or just expelled.
            Just what you’d expect from g*d-fearing barbarians in fact.

          2. Hang on – I know that name. John Clees … dirty book? … No, not “Clees” … are you typoing Mr Cheese’s lanky son? … Cleland … I’m thinking of “John Cleland (1709–1789), English novelist, author of Fanny Hill: the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure” ; who’re you thinking of?

          4. If my memory serves me correctly … [Wikis]

            Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, the only child of Reginald Francis Cleese, an insurance salesman, and his wife Muriel Evelyn (née Cross).[1] His family’s surname was originally Cheese, but his father had thought it was embarrassing and changed it when he enlisted in the Army during World War I.

            Your typo is telling you something.

          5. “Your typo is telling you something.”

            Well you tell me then we’ll both know, ‘cos I’m buggered if I do. 😉

    1. Interesting. I wonder if Wiley was going deep: fisherman = metaphor for Christian (go be fishers of men). Eh, probably just a coincidence.

      1. Almost certainly not. He’s a regular character. I think it’s more significant that he’s basically silent in this sequence — he’s usually talktative.

        He did complain about a policy Flo instituted asking people not to discuss religion, but he was fully reassured when she pointed out that baseball is not, actually, a religion. (Although he did proclaim that to be blasphemy.)

      2. I think it’s coincidence. I’ve been reading “Non Sequitur” for years, and Eddie has been around for ever, mostly telling tall tales – there was a short series last winter where he was keeping the cafe warm with his hot air.

  15. You wrote, “Is there a correlation between conservative religiosity and the inability to write and spell?”

    There’s a recent book out by Bonnie Weinstein called “The Far Right Christian Hater: You Can Be a Good Speller or a Hater, But You Can’t Be both.”

  16. The correlation between conservative religiosity and the inability to write and spell?

    Its home schooling. If your teacher,mom, had an 8th grade education, chances are you will have one too.

  17. “Is there a correlation between conservative religiosity and the inability to write and spell?”

    Presumably, since there is one between conservative religiousity and lower education, and one between lower education and problems with spelling and so on.

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