The Ruth Institute, “a project of the National Organization For Marriage Education Fund,” Tuesday posted and linked to an article titled, “You Whiny Sniveling Little Atheists Are Pathetic!,” that called atheists “whiny, sniveling, little, pusillanimous cowards,” “outsiders,” “puerile dimwits,” and “a pitiful joke” with “delicate and frail … mental architecture.” Popular award-winning blogger Joe Jervis, aka Joe.My.God., was the first to publish a piece that identified the existence of the article, then updated his own article to indicate that NOM’s Ruth Institute had “yanked the post, no doubt because of our exposure of their vitriol.”
The Ruth Institute may have “yanked” the piece from their “Ruth Blog,” but they didn’t bother to delete the tweet that publicized their article, nor could they remove the anti-atheist article from Google search results.
Jervis adds:
“Remember this article the next NOM starts screaming about those horrible, mean homosexuals. And remember the post linked to from this same blog which suggested that pious Christians should spit on gay couples on the street.”
Founded by Jennifer Roback Morse, The Ruth Institute’s mission is to “make marriage cool.” That would be straight, heterosexual marriage, not same-sex marriage, which, according to NOM President Brian Brown, “doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the institution of marriage which God authored and which virtually every human society has endorsed since the dawn of civilization.”
Curiously, even though the Ruth Institute is a project of the NOM Education Fund, which NOM says, “represents another aspect of NOM’s overall effort to protect marriage, engaged solely in pro-marriage education and research, making information resources available to clergy, scholars, political leaders, and activists across the country,” demonizing and attacking atheists hardly seems in keeping with that stated mission.
And apparently, now, NOM and their Ruth Institute are only interested in supporting and advancing Christian heterosexual marriage. And apparently, even atheist heterosexual marriage is now subject to scorn, ridicule, derision, and downright hostility from NOM’s Ruth Institute.
READ: NOM: Most Young People Are Promiscuous, Secular, Uneducated
The Ruth Institute may have pulled “You Whiny Sniveling Little Atheists Are Pathetic!,” but there is still the original post, written by Mary Kochan, the Editor-in-chief of Catholic Lane. Here’s a section:
Oh, boo hoo.
You whiny, sniveling, little, pusillanimous cowards. You have the audacity to tell us Christians that we are “weak†and that our religion is a “crutch.†You are supposed to be so “courageousâ€, venturing forth boldly into the existential mystery of being alone, facing with stoicism the nothingness that awaits you at death, priding yourself on your realism and self-reliance. You are a bunch of feeble fakers.
Yes, you are outsiders. Go start your own damn country. This one was started by Christians, you puerile dimwits. It is Christians who established and largely Christians who fought and died to maintain the freedoms you enjoy. And Christians are still the majority. Apparently your vaulted belief system doesn’t equip you to handle being in the minority. That’s interesting, isn’t it? After all, this was and is a societal situation valiantly handled by millions and millions of Christians who suffered — and currently suffer — real oppression, violence, torture, economic deprivation, and cruel deaths. But you have to go through turning off the TV once in a while and so your precious puny feelings are hurt. How delicate and frail your mental architecture is!
You are a pitiful joke. Trembling over the mere mention of God. Running like babies to court because of your brittle feelings. “Oh, but judge, but judge, I saw a cross and I just can’t stand it.†“I heard someone say ‘Merry Christmas’ and it hurt my feelings.†“I just can’t sleep knowing there is a manger scene at the courthouse.†“The sight of the Ten Commandments makes me wet my pants.†Now we see how inadequate and feeble you really are. Rage, therapists say, is the flip side of helplessness. And so we see your rage against religion in the public square for what it is: a product of your own insubstantial internal resources. Go look at yourself in the mirror if you can bear the pathetic, contemptible sight of yourself. Our merest martyr shows you to be a wimp – fourteen-year-old Kizito of Uganda singing hymns while being burned alive. But you, you anemic, lily-livered worms – you quail at pushing the off button on the remote! Hah!
As Jeremy Hooper from Good As You points out, this is “the second time in the past thirty days, the Ruth Institute (a project of the National Organization For Marriage Education Fund) has had to yank an offensive blog post.”
Just a few weeks ago, Hooper noted in a separate post that “it was just two months ago that NOM was viciously attacking David Weprin’s Orthodox Jewish faith, simply because the NY Assemblyman voted for equality. Hooper also mentioned “the time that NOM Cultural Director Thomas Peters said pro-equality Catholics are “fake Catholics.”
To be clear, NOM’s Ruth Institute may or may not have published the entire article in full, though I did see it before they pulled it and to my recollection they did. Regardless, they published enough of it to set off a firestorm.
NOM has continuously moved from its original format of secular “traditional marriage” advocate, to sectarian right wing religious extremist Christian anti-gay marriage hate group. In fact, NOM is now in full force attack mode against gays. lesbians, and bisexual and transgender people, along with Jews, atheists, and even pro-choice Catholicd And while the Southern Poverty Law Center has yet to designate them as such, given their current tack, I do not expect it will take much longer.
Image, top, via Joe.My.God.