Godless Sodomites In Memphis! (It Ain't Who You Think)

Strap in, we are about to have a Moral High Ground Moment.

Well, I have learned my lesson! Or learned a lesson anyway. And it is “Do not tell yourself you can take a couple weeks to travel and then catch up the ‘Pastors and Youth Pastors Abusing Kids’ Project when you get back.” Haha, I am so full of shit! Because what happens is then I will get so far behind that I miss three weeks of newsletters and I’m STILL not done with that (enormous) update! (But I’m getting close.)

But hey, I’m here now. And I need to TALK SOME SHIT about what’s going on with Donald Trump’s evil invasion of Memphis. And because this is The Moral High Ground, we’re going to start with one of my trademark cussy Bible studies, which are meant for everybody, no matter what you believe or don’t believe.

You ready?

Do you know the sin of Sodom? Conservative Christians think they know, but they’re totally full of shit.

You see, the Bible addresses that question explicitly approximately nine or 15 times. If I were superstitious I might believe someone out there really wanted to make sure people didn’t miss the fucking point.

If you don’t have a Christian background, lemme pull out my concordance and show you something:

Genesis 13:13 says the people of Sodom were “wicked,” and not a lot else. A little bit later, in Genesis 18, Abraham is doing that thing where he bargains with God not to do something violent and pissy that he’ll regret later, it’s the whole conversation where God is ultimately like OK fine, if you can find one person there who isn’t a complete dick, I won’t rain down sulfur on Sodom. (Spoiler, there wasn’t one.)

The next chapter, Genesis 19, is when the action happens, including the part where the men of Sodom are like “BRING US YOUR HOUSEGUESTS SO THAT WE MAY HAVE SEX WITH THEM.” Which seems like gang rape and not homosexuality, especially if you actually read the damned passage yourself, instead of just listening to what your Independent Fundamentalist Baptist pastor and his fourth-grade education say it says.

Interpreting it as a condemnation of homosexuality is also kind of weird when you consider that Lot is immediately like “No! Gang rape my virgin daughters!” I mean … I just don’t think this passage is the moral guide on human sexuality conservative Christians would like it to be? (As biblical scholar Matthew Vines notes, there is a lesser-known story that’s horrifically similar in Judges 19. Click that Bible link at your own risk, it’s so fucked up.)

But look here!

In Isaiah 1, after the writer says “Listen up, you rulers of Sodom, you rulers of Gomorrah” in verse 10, there are a couple verses that really jump out.

There’s verse 15: “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood!”

And 17: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

And 23: “Your rulers are rebels, partners with thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them.”

Not a lot about buttsex in there, but dangit, God sounds pissed.

It’s really spelled out in Ezekiel 16:49-50, check it out:

49 Now this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and complacent; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them, as you have seen.

Arrogant, overfed, complacent, did not help the poor and needy. Now, conservative Christians skip that sentence and say “See?! It says abominations, that’s homo talk!” But Vines did the Hebrew legwork, and the word there is used far more broadly throughout scripture. He also went through all kinds of other ancient Jewish lit, and what he found was references to Sodom’s arrogance and hostility to strangers.

It wasn’t until Jude 1:7 that a biblical author stomped their feet and said something that even sort of could be interpreted as referring to gay stuff, and bigots have been clinging to that (and their extremely biblically and culturally illiterate interpretation of the original story) ever since.

But that verse Ezekiel 16:49 there is pretty explicit. Again, it’s like somebody stuck it in there to make extra certain people didn’t miss the entire fucking point.

And that’s just one very famous Bible story.

There are thousands of verses about kindness and compassion for immigrants and the poor and downtrodden. Here are some that specifically pertain to immigrants:

“You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 10:19 (ESV)

“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:33-34 (ESV)

“‘Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’” Deuteronomy 27:19 (NIV)

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.” Zechariah 7:9-10 (NRSV)

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Matthew 25:35 (NRSV)

“Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren you did it to me.”
Matthew 25:40 (NRSV)

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” Hebrews 13:1-3 (NRSV)

Oh yeah, and of course there’s always that little parable about the Good Samaritan, where the man who was different, the guy who looked different, who wasn’t from around here, the one people were inclined to hate, that was the guy who showed kindness, love and mercy to the person in need.

Jesus told that parable in response to a question about how one attains eternal life. And his answer was LOVE YOUR FUCKING NEIGHBOR, and then he proceeded to make clear that “neighbor” does not mean only the people you wish to be neighborly to, you assholes.

Yeah, it’s almost like somebody didn’t want people to miss the fucking point that “as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me.”

Or that if you treat immigrants like shit, you are literally punching Jesus in the face.

And you think you’re getting into heaven after that?

Maybe It Was Memphis …

ICE Gestapo and their Tennessee State Trooper escorts harassing people in Memphis. (Credit: Hunter Demster)

In case you haven’t heard, Memphis, where I live, is under violent invasion and occupation by Donald Trump’s domestic enemy forces. It’s not making the news the way Chicago, Portland, DC and Los Angeles have, not because it’s less brutal, or because people in this city aren’t fucking pissed off and horrified, but because the media doesn’t know how to cover it. It doesn’t look the same as those cities (which don’t look the same as each other either).

I wrote about it some at Wonkette, after NPR shit the bed with an article claiming that Memphis — you know, just the whole city — “sees opportunity” in this federal occupation. You can read that if you’d like, but one point I made is that here in Memphis, we don’t have the built-in protections those other cities have. This is the first southern city to be attacked by Trump’s forces. It’s a very blue city in a very red state, with a white fascist/Christian nationalist governor and senators who just looooove to shit on this majority Black city when it’s down, and who are absolutely creaming to see it under the boot of Trump’s Nazis.

A city like Memphis has to mostly go it alone, trying to mitigate harm as much as humanly possible, because nobody’s coming to save us. And, you know, there’s certain embedded history here, something that lives in people’s blood, a sense of the length of the struggle for justice that understands on a fundamental level that this did not start on January 20. This fight for equality and fair treatment has been going on for generations upon generations.

Also our mayor Paul Young kind of sucks, is kind of a bootlicker who appears inclined to collaborate with fascists when he feels like it. For example, the way he and the Memphis Chamber have rolled out a red carpet for Elon Musk to exploit Memphis’s resources — best water in the nation, thanks to this giant aquifer — to build and power his emotional support AI robot, the one that’s prone to suddenly spending the weekend praising Hitler, like a common Young Republican.

But we’re here in Memphis, and this is happening to us. Some of us far more than others.

In Memphis, Trump’s operation is less torture porn for Kristi Noem’s Glamour Nazi reality TV show, and more of a dog-and-pony show to convince the city’s stupid, scared, white racist Republicans — and oh boy, are they stupid, scared, white and racist — that Daddy is doing something about The Crime, which serves as the cover story for the real op, which is Stephen Miller’s Gestapo Terror crusade against any and all immigrants with brown skin.

Governor Bill Lee and Pam Bondi are lying their white asses off about all the “VIOLENT CRIMINALS AND KNOWN GANG MEMBERS!” they’re supposedly getting off the streets. That’s according to the data, as reported by the excellent local outfit MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Scarcely anyone is being arrested for violent crime, and immigrants are being detained and disappeared on administrative warrants for being immigrants, not for being violent criminals.

It’s appeared from the beginning that there were two prongs to this crusade:

There’s the State Trooper seatbelt/traffic violation squad, implemented so these dumpy loser feds can score some easy warrant pickups to goose their numbers, and HOPEFULLY terrorize/kidnap some Latinos in the process. (ICE typically follows behind the traffic stops in unmarked cars, you can pick them out by how they mostly look like the MAGA pigs who attacked the Capitol on January 6. I saw one that I was pretty sure was ICE last night posted up in a Cybertruck. Isn’t that on the fucking nose?)

Then there’s just the terror raids against Latino people, in their homes, their places of business, anywhere they can find them. Maps of the incident reports from those tracking them should make clear to any Memphian who is not full of shit that the target here is absolutely not violent crime, but rather 100 percent about Stephen Miller jacking his dick raw while living out his sick fantasies of inflicting maximum pain on America’s Latino immigrants.

(I discussed how you can tell by looking at those maps in the Wonkette post I linked above. I will also note that so far Trump’s Nazis have done an excellent job mostly keeping the action away from the treelined thoroughfares where the city’s wealthiest white Republicans live. Loud surveillance helicopters giving people PTSD? Well certainly not above Bitsy and Beauregard’s Memphis Country Club-adjacent neighborhood! That would be unsavory. The South does have a long history of endeavoring to keep the dirty work out of the line of sight of the plantation’s front porch, after all, and we wouldn’t want Bitsy to see something disturbing that could cause her latent moral compass to inadvertently activate.)

Anyway, this is what it looks like right now. Fascism’s brutality tends to escalate in phases. It will likely change as time goes by. Bill Lee says the motherfuckers are going to be here forever. (Told you they’re creaming themselves over this.)

Which brings us to why I told that story about Sodom above.

And You’ll Know They Are Christians By The Way They Get Soooo Fucking Mad When You Try To Feed The Hungry

What indeed was the sin of Sodom once again? Ah yes, inhospitality. Acting like a Nazi toward strangers, immigrants, the poor, the sick, the least of these. It’s all over the damn Bible, y’all. It’s not like it’s just a few passages where bigots twist themselves and the texts into knots trying to prove that God Hates Fags.

Immigrants in Memphis, regardless of legal status, are terrified to leave their houses. Kids aren’t going to school. People are scared to go to work. Immigrant-owned restaurants and even grocery stores are empty. It’s hurting businesses, and thus the local economy. And as a result, there’s a need for people to contribute food and delivery services to people who are at risk, who can’t get it for themselves. People are scared they’re going to be abducted away from their kids, or some of them are those left behind, after a parent has already been abducted by Trump’s Gestapo.

So there’s something called the Immigrant Pantry that’s stepping in to help fill the need, and Indivisible Memphis is deeply involved in it.

The local NBC affiliate Action News 5 wrote about this, and the comments section on Facebook was one of the most awful, vile, evil, maddening, decidedly un-Christlike things I have ever seen.

There was whataboutism:

“We have Veterans who fought for this Country that are homeless and need food banks.”

“What about American families that need food?”

“I agree everyone needs to eat. I also thank you need to obey the law. Apparently they have not. Charity begins at home. What about our Veterans that risk their life for our freedom that are in need. Lots of these immigrants do not pay taxes work for cash and we, the tax payers, feed them, supply them health care & a place to live. MY OPINION!!”

There were white conservatives terrified that an immigrant might get a better haul from the food pantry than a white person who they also were not helping: “I thought food banks were for all people.” And “When did America begin to open food banks to one demographic of people EMOJI EMOJI.”

There were vile, hateful white supremacist pieces of shit: “Looks like ICE needs a trip to the pantry.”

There was the blissful fucking ignorance of white conservatives fully brainwashed into the lie that “if they’re here legally there is nothing about which to be concerned” (verbatim comment), and it doesn’t matter how much evidence you show them that their white supremacist Nazi Daddy president is brutalizing immigrant citizens and non-citizens alike, that the common denominator is racism and racial profiling, they don’t believe you, because they are simple-minded morons who believe whatever Daddy does is always right and must not be questioned.

(You know how we talk a lot here about how MAGA conservatism is approximately 97 percent about weird pervy Daddy issues? Here’s some!)

There was good old MAGA ignorance, the kind that’s been lobotomized to believe that immigrants are somehow getting a free ride and benefits that aren’t available to traditional white American citizens: “How about the tax paying citizen?” (Undocumented immigrants pay taxes, and receive no benefits in return, Cletus.)

Just total scum of the earth people:

“Hey ice has plenty of food at the local facility. It will even give you a free airline ticket home to see your family.

“Hmmmm sounds like ice needs to know about this place. Thanks for the tip EMOJI EMOJI EMOJI.”

“Is it for immigrants or illegal immigrants. There’s a big difference.”

IN FEEDING HUNGRY PEOPLE INCLUDING CHILDREN, YOU REPROBATE FUCKING NAZI?

“If you quit feeding them they will go home. Like cats.”

And now you see how we got from the story of Sodom to here.

Found Them! Found The Godless Sodomites!

You will be shocked how many of those people, if you click on their profiles, you will find all kinds of bullshit memes about how much they love Jesus and prayer and cats and Veterans Day and crying bald eagles and tragically slain podcasters.

One woman said: “That isn’t compassion. That’s enabling.”

Great, to fucking feed people is enabling.

Her Facebook bio, of course, says, “Jesus and life are God’s gift.”

So instead of just yelling at these vile people I decided to respond to them a different way. (For my own mental health as much as anything else.) Perhaps you might like to try this tactic, whether you are a religious person or not, whether you came from the Christian tradition or not. The Moral High Ground is for EVERYBODY, after all, but pretty much all these fuckers think they are God’s most special and holy white Christian Republican snowflake.

So this is a tactic that is tailored to them.

I Decided To Publicly Question Their Salvation.

Sure did.

In this, I was inspired by a booklet called “Combat Theology,” written by futurist and friend of The Moral High Ground Cassidy Steele Dale. It’s about how to, as he explains, defang people who weaponize religion against others. There’s more to it than just this, but one of the big keys is that when you argue with/fuck with people like this, you want to instill doubt. You poke at the underlying vulnerabilities of what they outwardly claim to be so certain of, which is that they are the most perfect, most superior, most moral and upstanding Christians who ever sprang spontaneous erections when “God Bless The USA” came over the loudspeaker.

Who’s flying first class to heaven? They are!

But yet here they are being publicly evil to immigrants? Jesus says that does not compute.

One woman angrily commented that “They are NOT immigrants. They are CRIMINAL ALIENS. They are in the US ILLEGALLY!” So I reminded her of Jesus’s warning about false prophets (COUGH!) where he explains that bad trees do not bear good fruit and vice versa and by your fruits shall ye know them. I told her that her Christian witness is nonexistent, and that if she doesn’t work on herself, one day, Christ is going to spit her out like he says in Matthew 7:21-23.

Debbie, do you really think Jesus is gonna save you?

Think about all the times you have doubts about that, the times you don’t tell people about, because you think you’re the only one who’s having those doubts.

Jesus was really clear, Debbie. By your fruits, shall ye know them. Racist white ladies who treat immigrants like garbage, who clap their hands and stomp their little feet in glee when they watch non-white people get hurt, your tree doesn’t have bad fruit, Debbie, it’s dead.

Jesus told us we could pick you out this way.

Matthew 7:21-23, Debbie. It’s about you, Debbie.

Another woman would not accept that people are being racially profiled and brutalized — again, Daddy would not do that! — so I asked her how that made her feel as a Christian:

That’s not true, Lisa, people are being brutalized, whether they have their papers or not. How does it make you feel that people are being racially profiled just because some ICE agent thinks they look foreign?

Do you realize that you just typed they are allowing themselves to be harassed, as if they somehow deserve it, just for not being white in America?

Do you realize what a monster you sound like?

And do you think Jesus loves you, the way that you speak of and treat immigrants? Because I regret to tell you, Lisa, that your salvation may be a fraud.

Ooh, she got mad.

“I assure you that I am a child of God and won’t be going to hell.” Yeah, tell it to Jesus, buddy. She continued:

“So please save your preaching for the pulpit. God loves us all but there are laws and they should be obeyed also. So as I said please save your preaching and religious judgement for someone else because I’m not interested in your way of thinking or your judgement”

Funny how she told me to go preach in a pulpit like a real pastor, but whatever. Good comeback!

I responded, “I’m just going based on the Bible, Lisa. Jesus talks so much about how people who are evil toward immigrants and the least of these are not part of his Kingdom, no matter how much they prophesy in his name. And you may like not my way of thinking, but it sounds ike you don’t like Jesus’s either.”

To one angry white man who challenged me, I said I’d pray for God to change his heart, that one day he might be redeemed and sanctified. Haven’t heard back from that guy. In fact, the things I said seem to have shut most of them up.

Yes, it’s a fun game, and you can play it in person too. (And if this strikes you as very naughty, remember that these motherfuckers do not hesitate one fraction of a second before telling LGBTQ+ people and people who have had abortions and non-Christians and various and sundry others that they will burn in hell when they die.)

You never know how it’s going to hit them, or who else might see or hear it. And if a still, small voice visits even one of them and says HEY STOP BEING SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING NAZI, well then I’d say it’s time well spent.

Volunteer or donate to the immigrant pantry while you’re at it. Or figure out what else is needed in your own community to help the first wave of victims of Trump’s and Stephen Miller’s fascism.

We are indeed all in this together.

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-Evan