Theodore Shoebat is a rabidly homophobic, Muslim-hating Christian fundamentalist probably best known for a seemingly endless stream of YouTube videos in which he calls for “sodomites” to be put to death.
Right Wing Watch does a pretty good job of keeping track of him in articles with titles like “Theodore Shoebat Calls For SWAT Teams To Raid The Homes Of Gay Couples And Seize Their Children” and “Theodore Shoebat Says Jesus Would Personally Beat Gays To Death.”
Well, it turns out that young Mr. Shoebat — son of Walid Shoebat, an anti-Muslim activist and “expert” who says he’s a former Muslim Brotherhood member — also kind of hates women. Or at least women who have rights.
In a recent video, RWW reports, Theodore Shoebat declared that “all these sluts who kill their own children” deserve to be executed.
They had a choice to keep their legs closed. They could have controlled themselves, and they got the abortions and they murdered their own children. Let me tell you something, I believe in the death penalty for these women and I believe that God himself agrees with me.
Here are the highlights of that lovely video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=FNG8KAeaN1c
Not surprisingly, he’s also not too keen on women having the right to vote:
I don’t believe in women voting. I don’t believe in the suffragist movement, I don’t believe in women in politics. If they’re so righteous, let them stay at home and teach their children that righteousness. They have no place on the podium, they have no place in the political sphere. …
We wouldn’t have the crap if women simply taught righteousness to their children as opposed to trying to compete with men all the time in the political sphere and trying to dominate their husbands!
Let’s go to the tape:
Providing yet more evidence for the theory of “Crank Magnetism,” Theodore Shoebat also believes that:
- Homosexuality leads to cannibalism
- Blasphemy also leads to cannibalism
- Gays are trying to”transform the Scouts into a Nazi-like gay youth club,”
- The government should send SWAT teams to shut down yoga studios
Can you guess which candidate he supports for president? I’ll give you one hint: this person’s name starts with “Donald J. Trum.”
Theodore Shoebat hopes that if this mystery candidate is elected, he will institute a “Christian supremacist” regime in which
there’s no free reign for homosexuals, there’s no liberation for perversity and debaseness and just downright weird mutant psychos walking around with clipped liberal dyke hair and men dressing up as women and all that sick, psycho stuff. People who flaunt the Quran in a Christian society would be arrested, at times put to death … .
Stop trying to make “put everyone to death” happen. It’s not going to happen.
Theodore Shoebat, everyone’s second favourite extremist theocrat named Theodore (next, of course, to Theodore Beale/Vox Day).
Ah yes, it’s nice to get back to the simple, straightforward Misogyny Classic after the last few days of Aurini’s convoluted fight against decency and Milo’s brain-aching attempts at making himself relevant.
Sometimes, you have to go back to basics.
@Alan
@khanes mom
There’s also the verse that says to punish someone harsher if they cause a woman to miscarry AND suffer long term injury, than if she simply miscarries. Here God certainly seems to value the body of a woman more than the fetus inside of it.
Then there’s the whole “breath of life” thing in the OT where Jewish custom was that a baby isn’t actually alive until it’s first breath. And that whole “love thy neighbour”, “grace, compassion and wisdom” thing that the NT especially leans heavily on.
Meanwhile the pro-life movement bases its rhetoric on the fuzzy concept of “life/the soul begins at conception” (the Bible says NOTHING of the sort) and “Don’t kill” (which can perhaps be interpreted better as “Don’t murder” since the OT Israelites killed quite a lot of people during war – under the instruction of God). Other than that it seems to be just a mix of emotions (cute widdle bay-beeees, pregnancy is amazing etc.) and puritan misogyny that a) thinks a woman’s only God-approved role is mother and b) that children are “punishment” for sex (what the actual fuck). P.S:: neither a or b is supported by the Bible either.
One last point: Scripture also says to judge people by their fruits i.e. their actions, and what fruits have the pro-life side grown? Lies, harassment and ACTUAL MURDER to try and further their cause. God approves? I don’t fucking think so.
*gets off soap box* Ahem. Yeah, I’ve believed for a while that the pro-choice side has a stronger Biblical backing than the forced-birth side does. Sorry for the outburst. I’ve yet to meet an IRL fellow Christian that feels this way, so that was kind of sitting inside me for ages with no outlet until now.
There is a verse about how women are supposed to be ruled by men and refers to women as mothers only, etc. It is Genesis 3:16, which is the Curse, and which (according to Christian theology) Jesus was supposed to fix. When Jesus died on the cross, the lifting of the Curse became available to anyone who asked for it. Christians who argue that women need to continue to live under the rules of the Curse, because of reasons, are using some suspect theology.
Silly, they’re not doing it for economic reasons! Eating human flesh turns you into a satanist/demon/wendigo/feminist/whatever, and it’s all a ploy of Big Daddy G! Everybody knows that! /s
@Policy of Madness
I thought the law itself wasn’t supposed to change? But even if this really was the case, these people wouldn’t be living in accordance to Old Testament law either, even if just for the food they eat, the clothes they wear, or the lack of a spade strapped to their hips.
Consistency is for communists! /more s
@Rosa
Genesis 3:14-19 are not the law. They are the Curse. If you believe that Jesus came to Earth to undo the Curse, then there is no reason for verse 16 to apply today any more than the remainder should apply today.
Jesus said that’s what he was doing.
The Curse goes, in part:
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food”
But Jesus had this to say:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”
Jesus was saying right there, plainly, that he was undoing the Curse.
@RosadeLava
The Curse isn’t the same thing as the Law. The Curse is the part of Genesis just after Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden of Eden (according to scripture. I personally believe that the Creation/Fall story is metaphorical) and God explains to them what life will be like for them with sin in the world. Seeing as Jesus died to cover for sin in believer’s lives and reverse The Fall, that means that Christians really shouldn’t be living a life according to the Curse.
The Law, on the other hand, was the laundry list of instructions that God gave to the Israelites as they were trying to form their own way of life after being held captive to Egyptians for so many generations. They pretty much had to start building their culture and society from scratch, hence why the Mosaic rules are so detailed. There’s ongoing debate on whether the Law can’t “change” due to some seemingly conflicting verses, and I have my own opinions, but that’s a discussion for another time maybe. I don’t want to derail.
EDIT:: NINJA’D BY POM.
Actually, the belief that the Bible teaches that “life begins at first breath” (rather than conception) was the predominant one among evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants until very recently. There are some holdouts including Peter Ruckman who maintain that view to this day (although Ruckman is admittedly a very a fringe figure).
In fact, W. A. Criswell (who was the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time) welcomed Roe v. Wade. Criswell was no theological liberal either; he was the architect of the “conservative resurgence” within the SBC.
It only began to change in the late 70s and early 80s, mostly because of things like Evangelicals and Catholics Together and the “ecumenism of the trenches”, which involved evangelicals and Roman Catholics who believed there should be no daylight between the two on social issues. This “trench ecumenism” led to massive shifts in belief among both, and evangelicals began embracing the Humanae Vitae teachings, while Catholics started endorsing Christian Zionism and free-market Reaganism. All of these things would previously have been very unusual, and out of character for their respective traditions.
The Church Fathers themselves (at least the Greek-speaking ones) taught that human personhood was derived from the nous (i. e., the consciousness, or soul). The idea of “biological personhood”, which Rome and Humanae Vitae teach, would have been ridiculous to them.
I tend to agree with the Eastern Orthodox view on a lot of things. I still believe abortion is morally wrong in most cases* but I don’t believe a zygote etc. has a nous, or that it is the equivalent of an actual person in later stages of development*. Abortion is sui generis rather than being morally equivalent to a drive-by shooting or something of the sort. If there is any analogy at all it would be to unplugga
I actually view the idea of biological personhood as a fairly serious error since it is essentially materialistic. It’s also difficult to square Humanae Vitae‘s rigorism with what even the Catholic Church taught and did prior to the relatively recent era. (Did you know that condoms were invented by a Catholic priest? That’s right, they were! And that is to say nothing of St. Brigid of Kildare….)
I believe in ensoulment, that this is when a personhood begins, and that it is a mystery when exactly it occurs. (The Orthodox believe that it’s okay not to know everything and that many things are mysteries; they have an apophatic approach to theology. They don’t dogmatize everything the way Roman Catholics and Calvinists do. It’s not a church you want to join if you have what Max Weber called a rational-legal mindset).
*That’s because it is a potential person; but potential persons still have value according to my view, and the view of the Orthodox. However, I’d be the first to argue that in the case of anencephaly or other cases where there is no potential for viability now or in the future, that the doctors should have the right to determine the proper course of action, not the government and certainly not the Vatican.
Oops, I meant “….if there is any analogy at all it would be to unplugging a life-support machine when the patient is incapable of giving an answer either way”.
It’s interesting that even Rome has been all over the map on this one. While they intervened during the Terri Schiavo case, they also allowed the late Pope (now St.) John Paul II to die naturally rather than attempting to keep him alive as long as possible using the latest newfangled science. On the face of it this seems a bit self-contradictory.
@Policy of Madness and sunnysombrera
Thank you for the correction!
I just… that. Ick. Ick ick ick ick ick ick ick.
I legitimately feel my skin crawl when I see people like this trying to use religion for this sort of blathering hate. Just… no, guys. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant at this point: no God worth being worshiped would think like this. I just… aug. It makes my brain and my heart hurt so much.
Someone needs to smack these guys. Not like hurt-smack, but your-mom-whapped-you-upside-the-back-of-the-head-lightly-with-her-hand-because-you’re-being-stupid smack.
Here’s an interesting article about how the view of abortion in conservative Protestant culture changed over time. The takeaway is that this is a very recent innovation; as the article states, the idea that this is the Biblical view, amongst Protestants, is younger than the Happy Meal.
There’s evidence that the decision to push abortion as the wedge issue between Republicans and Democrats was cynically motivated as part of the Republican Southern Strategy. It was all about converting white Catholics – who had always been against abortion – to the Republican side. They couldn’t very well tell only Catholics that the GOP was anti-abortion, so they had to sell white Protestants on the idea, too.
@amused, what an awful situation, so sorry you and your mom had to deal with that
@Saphira, I think he thinks that people are growing meat from stem cells. Or that they soon will be.
@American Red Tory
Interesting! Thanks for adding to the discussion. I think I agree with you that a zygote et al is just a potential person rather than a person, but personally I feel icky about particularly late term abortions (unless there is absolute need eg. mother is in danger, child will be seriously disabled and in constant pain) since the fetus is so close to completion it just doesn’t seem right. Up until then though, abortion is simply a-ok in my book.
(My conservative parents have used the line “some people use abortion like birth control and it’s wrong!” and I’ve tried to keep my patience as I explain to them that that’s a myth, vast majority of women seeking abortions are doing it because accidents happen despite the best laid plans of mice and men. Who the fuck would choose an invasive, costly procedure in place of popping a pill, wrapping a rubber or having an implant??).
@sunnysombrera
What about late term abortions feels icky to you, out of curiosity?
@kupo
It’s just feelz. That’s it. 😐 I know I’m no better than the pro-lifers I mentioned earlier in that regard, but I still wouldn’t force women not to have late-term abortions if I was a lawmaker.
By late-term I mean really late term though, not just one week into the third trimester or on the verge of viability, later than that. I also know that a very tiny fraction of abortions are done at that stage, and they’re done for the reasons I mentioned above, so it’s really a non-issue.
Gah. I should have gone to bed by now instead of staying up word-dribbling on my comments.
I understand this analogy, but I’ve never been comfortable with it. A life support machine is a machine, a thing. A woman isn’t a machine, a woman is a human. It isn’t the same thing.
On the abortion and the Bible thing; I remember reading somewhere that it says causing the death of a fetus is only murder after the quickening. That is, when it can be felt moving. I have no idea what book that would be in. The Bible is not my area of expertise.
@sunnysombrera
Things went bad fast for my mother at 32 weeks. They did an emergency cesarean section with the goal of saving her life, knowing I had an extremely small chance of surviving. I obviously did survive, but it was close enough that they told her not to get attached and they didn’t tie her tube as originally planned because she still wanted one more. I wasn’t a person at that point. Had I not survived, I would never have known the difference. Had the doctors not intervened, she could have died.
People don’t have late term abortions without a lot of anguish and heartache involved. The decision is made for medically necessary reasons. They’re not unwanted pregnancies being ended. IMO, there’s nothing icky about it. It’s about the health of the mother and/or the viability of the fetus.
I realize this is sounding like a lecture and that wasn’t my intention. I guess I’m just tired of people treating late term abortions like some kind of cruelty when they’re anything but.
I did say that I’m fine with late term abortions for reasons such as what your mother went through, and that I know that late term abortions are only really done for such reasons as well.
You’re right, basically. Thanks for securing my thoughts on the matter. 🙂 Told you I was word-dribbling at that point, I shouldn’t really have said anything to start with I guess. NOW I’M ACTUALLY GOING TO BED I SWEAR. 😛
@Amused
I’m so sorry that your father was cruel.
Ms. magazine had an article some years ago about women at risk for AIDS who seemed to have no options for preventing it.
Their husbands refused to wear condoms.
And their husbands insisted on sex, aka rape.
I always think of those women when the issue of abortion comes up.
It’s actually improper (in a geeky religious studies sense) to call Theodore Shoebat a “fundamentalist” because he’s Catholic, though “extremist,” “uber traditionalist,” “crank traditionalist,” or “crank/uber pseudo-traditionalist” are fine.
Fundamentalists, specifically, are non-Pentecostal Protestants who descend culturally and theologically from churches on the “fundamentalist” side of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, which usually includes the Scopes Trial and a series of controversies in the Presbyterian Church. Fundamentalists usually try to separate from the rest of American culture, practice strictly defined gender roles, and have rules designed to enforce cultural separation (no TV or movies, etc.).
Evangelicals share a lot in common theologically with fundamentalists, but evangelicals try to be more integrated into American society and they can be put on a left-right spectrum. Evangelicals tend more to the right, but some are left-wing or radical left even though they’re conservative on sex (at least for themselves). They typically vote based on the issues and not candidates’ religious creds, hence the support for Trump over Cruz in the South.
The Religious Right (as opposed to religious people on the right) is really a different theological animal than conservative evangelicalism or fundamentalism. It’s a mix of dominionism (in varying degrees), Neo-Pentecostalism, Catholicism, political Zionism, and Mormonism (the “America is a Christian Nation” stuff). They’re basically the people trying to get the more conservative evangelicals to care about politics.
I choose to think that this guy doesn’t actually believe any of this sh*t and is just being as outrageous as possible in order to attract views. Probably not true, but it’s the only way I can maintain what little faith in humanity I still have
@sunnysombrera, @Policy of Madness:
All I can say here is “agreed”.
bluecat says:
It’s probably something to do with the absurd belief from biblical times that hair is hollow and creates a vacuum that helps draw semen up through the body with more suction being created the longer the hair grows. Which is why men have to keep their hair short and women keep theirs long or nobody’ll ever get pregnant.
American Red Tory says:
Speaking as a potential “life-support machine” from your analogy, your morals can go fuck themselves. Did you even notice how you mention zygotes, the government, the Vatican and doctors, but neglected to mention the people carrying the pregnancies other than to analogize them to unthinking, unfeeling machines?