My oh my am I glad I left the south when I was young. Up here in Rochester, the worst I've seen is born-again fundamentalists standing in front of Wal Mart with stupid signs, I usually yell something like "Yeah, fuck Wal Mart!" when I pass them, but that's it. Then there was a guy who brought a podium and a speaker system to my college, he had a bunch of graphic pictures of aborted fetuses and inflammatory rhetoric about homosexuality, and the college has to let him come or he sues, and they have to make sure he doesn't get the crap beaten out of him, or he sues (he has won a number of assault cases this way). He funds his little tours with money he gets from being beaten up by people who he annoys. It's honestly a pretty clever system for an idiot to have devised. But come on, the kids at this dumb ministry rally are younger children, and everybody knows that children are extra stupid. It's fine if the principle and teachers are all dolts, we could've expected that, but the kids are almost defenseless against bullshit, at least when they're in school and being forced to attend some rally.
On a related note: Anybody hear about how some town in Alabama proposed a plan to let first-time offenders convicted of misdemeanors choose between church or jail? Though it's on hold "for review", just the fact that it could be brought forth by civil servants and public employees doth boil the brain inside the skull. Then again, don't all the states tend to steer "drug offenders" into the 12 step program, another covert religious cult? But they've got nothing on my 5 step program.
PS: I think I sold that rapper weed the other day.
