Dispatches from east of the 5

[essentialsaltes]

 California's social politics are pretty divided between the coast and the inland areas.

My Google Alert on 'atheism' dragged up some editorial feedback from Bakersfield.

A relatively tame editorial cartoon poking at the cognitive dissonance of the Trump Evangelical produced some pretty angry feedback from a couple folks.

TBC has really crossed the line on this absolutely defamatory cartoon. You are totally undeserving of the protection afforded you under the First Amendment. TBC has without a doubt totally embraced itself with the rest of the liberal scum media in this country. It is too bad the entire community of subscribers and advertisers can't boycott your despicable publication.

Your Last Supper cartoon was a totally blasphemous piece of (expletive), even for TBC.

The editor handled it all with aplomb.

Lower down, there is perhaps the more surprising feedback on the moral evils of interracial marriage:

Mr. Price goes on about how the Warren Court and equally liberal Burger Court forced Bob Jones University, a private very fundamentalist Christian college, to submit their longstanding Christian beliefs to the will of the court to desecrate and allow interracial marriages among their students by the taxing authority of the IRS. Thus precluding their exercising of their Creator's gift of free will to operate as they see fit. 

They were forced to comply or shut down. Judicial activism today is a euphemism of social engineering throughout the entire judicial system that enslaves everyone under its jurisdiction to a hell of moral bankruptcy and hopeless, fearful resignation of big brother (government) knows best racketeering.

Hard to believe people will equate moral bankruptcy with interracial marriage, but that's how some folks are 'east of the 5' (in Jason B's phrase).

I would also note there are some factual differences between apparently what the paper wrote and the angry reader. Although BJU did lose its tax exempt status, it was clearly not 'forced to comply or shut down'. Or forced to submit to anything by the court. I suppose the reader would be happy to know that the school did the 'principled' thing and continued to ban interracial couples on campus, although it cost them the tax exempt status in 1983. It was only after candidate George W Bush spoke there in 2000 that the dating ban got catapulted into the national news, and the school changed its policy of its own accord.

But don't worry, they didn't really let standards slip at BJU. As a Post story notes of the change in 2000:

Jones did not back off of the school's anti-Catholic position, and he said his university would not keep a gay student in school, just as it would not keep an adulterer or thief. And he said students are not allowed to read plays by Tennessee Williams. "Garbage in, garbage out," Jones said.