Today in Christian Love

There are decent people in this country. And then there are those who aren't decent. They're known as "conservatives."

Spend some time following internet conversations about your liberal cause of the day (global warming, racial injustice, etc) and eventually someone will get to the nut of why the issue pisses many people off: they think activists want them to feel guilty and they don’t want to feel guilty. That’s pretty much it. A huge part of our failure to do anything about the climate disaster or racist asshole cops comes from people protecting their delicate ego.

Take for example the reaction when Mark Lane, an apparantly wonderful guy and excellent dad who runs Poppa’s Fresh Fish Company in San Diego, took in a Guatemalan family of four who had been processed by ICE while they looked for family with whom to live until their court appearance.

Sounds like a good guy, right -- just the sort of person we all like to think we are. Well, maybe not all of us:

But the decision to take in the family has also made him the target of threatening emails, falsified Yelp reviews, phone calls, and death threats by anti-immigrant activists.

“I needed to show my three boys that we don’t use hate,” Lane recently told ThinkProgress. “That’s why I started the ‘Boycott Murrieta’ Facebook page. We were advocating for the children.”

You know what? These assholes should feel guilty. (And of course, the question that always occurs to me: how many of them do you think identify themselves as Christians? Don't misunderstand: I've known enough real Christians that I'm very much aware that this particular subset -- the ones I describe as "Christians," with sarcasm quotes, are not representative. Not even close.)

To compound matters, this is what these families and these children are fleeing (via Digby):

By the time Isaias Sosa turned 14, he'd already seen 15 bullet-riddled bodies laid out in his neighborhood of Cabañas, one of the most violent in this tropical metropolis. He rarely ventured outside his grandmother's home, fortified with a wrought iron gate and concertina wire.

But what pushed him to act was the death of his pregnant cousin, who was gunned down in 2012 by street gang members at the neighborhood gym. Sosa loaded a backpack, pocketed $500 from his mother's purse, memorized his aunt's phone number in Washington state and headed for southern Mexico, where he joined others riding north on top of one of the freight trains known as La Bestia, or the Beast. . . .

"There are many youngsters who only three days after they've been deported are killed, shot by a firearm," said Hector Hernandez, who runs the morgue in San Pedro Sula. "They return just to die."

At least five, perhaps as many as 10, of the 42 children slain here since February had been recently deported from the U.S., Hernandez said.

Sorry, I just can't wrap my head around the idea that there are people in this country who would consign anyone, much less children, to conditions like that.

And just to justify the title of this post, let me jump over to this story at Joe.My.God.:

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has issued a call for Catholics to refrain from participating in the viral ice bucket challenge because it funds an ALS study that uses embryonic stem cells.

"The beneficiary of the ice-bucket challenge funds a study using embryonic stem cells, which can only be obtained by destroying embryonic life. For that reason, we have determined that our schools should not raise money for the ALS Association, and should instead – if they wish – donate to another organization doing ALS research," the Archdiocese wrote in a prepared statement.

I'm not going to start on the Catholic Church, which I consider one of the most morally bankrupt institutions in the history of Western civilization. The idea of forbidding the faithful from participating in fundraising for the organization that probably has the best chance of finding a cure of ALS because it "violates Church teaching" speaks for itself: life begins at conception and ends at birth.

I confess I don't understand how a religion that started off offering a positive message became so completely perverted.