Ages: various
Occupations: various
Last Seen: everywhere
Bee-otched For: wanting to take America from us
In the eyes of the religious right, what does the American family look like?
Is it a husband and wife with a child or two or more? Does the wife work, or does she stay at home all day because the husband makes enough to support the entire family on one paycheck? Is the wife allowed to even think for herself, or is she the type who responds with "Wait until your father gets home" when her children present her with even the most basic questions?
In the world of people like Harrison Butker, the Kansas City Chiefs kicker who made headlines with his moronic speech at a graduation ceremony where he told all the women that their degrees are worthless and that they need to marry a rich man, it is. He's one of the lucky few who can support a family on one paycheck. Of course, for many American families, two 40-hour paychecks aren't going to cut it. Some now have to work a few hours doing Uber or Grubhub to pay the bills.
For many Americans, the dream of even starting a family is all but dead. My grandfather was 26 when my father was born. He had a good job as a mail carrier while my grandmother was a school teacher. However, my father was 29 when he had me. My mother had a variety of jobs over the years, such as secretary, convenience store worker, and even owned a failed computer repair shop with her ex-husband. My father—like his mother—worked in the school system, but as a bus driver.
Now, I am 43 and single like a Pringle. I was rejected in high school, and my prom date was a girl I absolutely hated. She was ugly inside and out. Thankfully, when I was away at school, someone introduced me to a place where a man like me can be a man: Deja Vu.
Yes! Deja Vu is the strip club that boasts about having thousands of beautiful girls and three ugly ones. Throughout my twenties, I went there once a month. Admittedly, I tried everything else throughout my life to meet and be with women elsewhere. I tried the bars, and most of the time, only other men wanted to talk to me and bore me to tears. One Black man even took me to his apartment, where he exposed himself in front of me. I've tried internet dating. However, most women in Grand Rapids seem to only like guys like me for my money and not much else.
And yes, I tried church and belonged to one for several years. But there were many reasons why I quit. One was that I dealt with a loser who refused to work and wanted me to give him $500. Another was that I found some horrible hypocrisy within the church itself. The pastor was seemingly pro-woman. After all, he was a board member of the local Planned Parenthood group and often explored the Bible to tell his flock that people often used it to bash women, gays, and people of color. But he would tell us that's not necessarily so. Well, as it turns out, the pastor was good pals with former Grand Rapids mayor George Heartwell, who helped sign into law in 2006 the city's unconstitutional strip club ban. IMHO, telling a woman that she can't be naked in front of a group of other men is just as bad as telling her that she can't have an abortion.
When the city outlawed strip clubs, they said that it would help clean up crime. Nearly twenty years later, it's worse, WAY worse. You can't turn on the six o'clock news without the anchor talking about another person being shot or a business being robbed. Last year, a Meijer near me was terrorized by a man stabbing customers. In that same store, another man had installed a camera inside a women's bathroom and spied on female customers. Even more frightening was that there was a mass shooting inside the Walmart near me on New Year's, which I avoided like the plague.
The funny thing is that Heartwell even mentioned that there's no link between strip clubs and violence. The local club owners even took the city to court, but the judges—all Republicans—ruled that the city had the right to develop its own local laws.
The 2006 law was the brainchild of Judy Rose, the longtime president of the Black Hills Neighborhood Association and a devout Christian. She was appalled that a new strip club called Showgirl Galleria had opened in Grand Rapids and flaunted the state's strip club laws. If you own a club and serve alcohol, your girls can only be topless, and your club can only serve patrons 21 and over. However, if you want full nudity and serve those 18 and over, then you can't serve alcohol. Well, Showgirl Galleria was two clubs in one. One side of the building was topless/21+, while the other side was full-nude and 18+.
One reason the law was passed was because when Rose challenged the city's laws, she received a large donation from an anonymous donor. It was rumored to be the DeVos family since Rose appeared in one of Dick's ads when he ran for governor in 2006. The law even made a DINO out of current Mayor Rosalynn Bliss, who joined Heartwell, another DINO, in signing the law.
Since the law was passed, Grand Rapids is now down to two bikini clubs while Showgirl Galleria has since been demolished for expensive condos. The only good thing that came out of all this is the fact that Judy Rose died five years ago.
You cannot strip in Grand Rapids, but you can obtain a gun from a church. Recently, New Chapel, a nondenominational church on 4 Mile Road in a plaza, raised some eyebrows when, during a Fourth of July raffle, they gave away an AR-15, the same gun used in mass shootings such as Sandy Hook and Parkland, plus, the gun used in the assassination attempt of New Chapel's lord and savior, Drumpf. According to the church's pastor, Joe Bevelacqua, John Adams believed that Independence Day should be a day celebrated with fireworks, barbecues, and guns. He also believes that Jesus wanted people to have personal protection, per Luke 22:35-37.
Recently, New Chapel announced that they had purchased the space in their plaza adjacent to their church for over a million dollars. The 36,000-square-foot section was formerly a Duthler's Family Foods Supermarket and is currently the Four Mile Showplace, which is used for events like gun shows and wedding receptions. New Chapel will keep its current space but plans to use it for youth ministry.
It's funny how there are people living paycheck to paycheck, while these assholes not only beg for money, but also give away machines that kill. If one of the winners of their AR-15s shoots another person, or if someone uses that gun to commit murder, the blood will be on New Chapel's hands.
Even worse, I attended a service at New Chapel several years ago. Long story short, I was still attending that one church whose pastor was buddy-buddy with Heartwell. However, he retired, and a new pastor, who was openly a lesbian, was installed. My mother moved from Arizona to be closer to me and attended this church with me. Well, when the pastor uttered "our mother, who art in heaven..." during the Lord's Prayer, she was instantly offended. She told me that she no longer wanted to go there, so we were on the hunt for a new church.
My mother's boss at the time—a Drumpf supporter and a total bitch—just happened to attend New Chapel and loved it. So, she told my mother about it and suggested that we go there. On a cold winter day when the roads were slick and icy, we went there. Needless to say, the service was typical megachurch fare, starting with 30 minutes of dopey, repetitive soccer-mom CCM that was practically a crossbreed of Coldplay and George Beverly Shea. It was then followed by a sermon by the pastor's wife. During the sermon, the audience was hooting and hollering, screaming "AMEN!" and "HALLELUJAH!" At times, I felt like I was in a Pentecostal church. I wasn't crazy about New Chapel, and neither was my mother.
After that horrible experience of slipping and sliding up the Beltline to attend that abortion of a megachurch, we visited one more church, Encounter Church on Kalamazoo Avenue. Granted, it was a little better. True, they begin their services with the usual coterie of WCSG-esque melodies and then a sermon performed by their pastor, Dirk Van Eyk, who acts like Pastor Jeff Difford from Young Sheldon if he were a 12-year-old boy.
Now, I'll give Dirk some credit. Sometimes he said that he didn't care who you are—man or woman, Black or White, gay or straight, Democrat or Republican—you were welcome at Encounter. Not to mention that some of his sermons were actually pretty good. But sadly, the church has that Debbie Downer aspect. At the end of one of his sermons, he said, "I'm sure that some of you who are currently using your phones to read today's Bible passage also use them to see things you shouldn't be seeing."
But Encounter does have one dark secret that I didn’t know about until maybe a month or two after I started attending. Even though, on the outside, they are a nondenominational megachurch, they’re actually owned by the ultra-right-wing Christian Reformed Church. It doesn’t say this at all on their website, but I’ve talked to a few of their parishioners to confirm it.
There were multiple reasons why I quit Encounter, and their CRC affiliation was one of them. Another reason was the pandemic. By the time it ended, my father and I had bought a house, and he told me that no one should ever force religion on me, not even my mother. She still watches Encounter's services from home, and as far as I know, she still gives them money.
Some of my longtime readers might be asking, "if you're against religion, why do you go to church?" Well, this is what happens when you have family that tries to push you into going. My mother wanted me to get baptized and she got her wish. However, every time I'm having a bad day at work, I think about that asshole ho annoyed me and tried to defraud me out of $500. Plus, there was a man from the church who I identified as gay who friended me multiple times on Facebook and filled my news feed with drawings of young, naked men. I think about the preachers who begged for money and cried that pornography was bad while violence was OK. Sorry, but I have my priorities straight. I'm at that point where if you even think about trying to get me to go to your church or follow your religion, I'm not interested. Years ago, I even attended a few Catholic churches out of respect for my cousin, who ended up estranged from my family. At one of them, there was a protester with a bullhorn screaming about how the church hurts people. Boy, did I want to join him.
So, if you want to get me to be a part of your stupid ass house of child molestation and hypocrisy, please do me a favor and suck my dick and go away. Besides, Jesus hung out with prostitutes.
It's no secret that moralists have been trying to eliminate pretty much anything they view as ungodly for centuries. In the 1930s, it was cannabis, with films like "Reefer Madness." Fast-forward to the 1950s, and there were anti-gay films like "Boys Beware," which was remade a few times. And in the '60s, adult magazines were the target, with dreck like "Perversion for Profit" and "Pages of Death." Both films were produced by sectors of the Catholic Church and Charles Keating, a convicted felon who defrauded many people out of their life savings during the Savings and Loan scandal of the late '80s.
The funny thing was that "Pages of Death" was hokum at its best. The 27-minute film from 1962 - which was lost for years - was about two detectives solving the rape and murder of a little girl, who was discovered on a dirt road. It turns out that the girl was murdered by a teenage boy who was addicted to the nudie magazines of the time, as well as horror stories that he bought from a variety store. In the film, the detectives discovered the magazines and other paraphernalia by searching the boy's personal rec room without proper permission.
However, in "Perversion For Profit," released a year later, they reveal the type of magazines the boy was looking at. Like Playboy, the majority of the nudie mags did show T&A but hardly any pubic hair. They talked about slides you could get through the mail. For all intents and purposes of research, I Googled "1960s nude slides," and yes, some of them did feature full-frontal nudity, but no hardcore sex.
Movies like 'Pages' and 'Perversion' both wanted to paint an ugly picture that their view of kitschy early 60s smut would lead to child abuse, homosexuality, and other forms of immorality. When I was 12, my parents divorced. My mother had everything my Dad did not, like cable TV, the family VCR, my Super Nintendo, and access to a downtown area where I could grab a slice of pizza or go to the movies. My Dad knew he had to compete since he only had four channels and our VCR was the outdated Betamax. Since my 'rents had split custody of me, visiting Dad kinda sucked. So, he knew he had to do things Mom wouldn't let me do. And one of them was to buy me Playboy Magazine.
When I was 14, I visited my uncle's apartment. He had magazines that made Playboy look like The Old Farmer's Almanac. Thankfully, my father was there to tell me what the models were doing in Club was what couples did in real life. Eventually, I would watch my first porno movie and since then, I've seen a whole lotta things that were far more explicit than 1960s nudies.
And guess what? I've never killed or raped a little girl.
Sadly, the war against women’s bodies goes back further. In the 1960s, Floyd Bloss owned several successful adult movie theaters in West Michigan, including the Burton Capri here in Grand Rapids. However, he was targeted by the morality police, who all wanted him gone for good. So, he hired a lawyer and won his case. However, he was broke from all the legal fees, so in 1965, a projectionist at his Battle Creek cinema offered to buy a portion of his theaters for $8,000. That 22-year-old man was Harry Mohney.
For the next five years, Bloss and Mohney opened more theaters, including a drive-in in Durand that was very profitable. The locals nicknamed it the "Durand Dirties" for its fare of X-rated films. However, in 1970, Bloss sold his share of their company to Mohney after his daughter, Debbie, was murdered in their Battle Creek theater. After the sale, Mohney—who grew up in a house with no indoor plumbing, was abandoned by his father at age nine, forced to leave home at age 16, and worked odd jobs until he started working for Bloss—was now worth over $2 million. With competition from home video in the ’80s, Mohney converted his theaters into full-nude strip clubs as Deja Vu. Today, Deja Vu has over 200 locations worldwide, and Mohney—now 81—is a billionaire.
It's funny how everything seems to be connected, considering that one of Deja Vu's flagship locations in Lansing was recently involved in some controversy. Republican Michigan state representative Kornelius "Neil" Friske was recently arrested for chasing an exotic dancer he invited to his home in Lansing with a gun and firing a few shots at her. He has not been charged yet, but his actions could result in felony charges.
Friske (ironically pronounced "frisky") represents the 107th District, which serves Charlevoix and Emmet Counties, plus portions of Cheboygan, Chippewa, and Mackinac Counties, or a giant chunk of the deep northernmost Lower Peninsula and the easternmost portion of the Upper Peninsula. His family owns Friske Orchards, a giant farm market located in the farming town of Atwood in northern Antrim County, 12 miles south of Charlevoix. Friske's is a definite boon to Atwood, whose other businesses include a hardware store, a tractor dealership, a golf course, and a smaller farm market, Royal Orchards. The town, which is unincorporated, has no post office and lost its gas station over a decade ago, leaving the 33-mile drive between Elk Rapids and Charlevoix with just one gas station, the Eastport Market Marathon in nearby Eastport. Atwood did have a small supermarket, Spartan-affiliated Atwood Shopping Center, which operated from the 1920s until the early 1990s. Most recently, it was an antique store.
During a recent conference, Friske maintained his innocence despite fellow lawmakers on both sides calling for his resignation. He recently lost his seat in the local primary to Parker Fairbairn.
Neil is the son of Richard Friske, who was born in Poland and fought for the Nazis in World War II. The elder Friske was also a Pentecostal minister and even donated to David Duke's 1999 run for 1st district of Louisiana congressman. He helped manage George Wallace's presidential run in 1968 and was a notorious opponent of Civil Rights and school desegregation. He supported everything from religious right policies to abstinence-only education. He served one term as a state representative in 1971-72. Richard Friske died in 2002, and his family has owned the property ever since.
In 2020, Friske Orchards made headlines when they announced that they would not require face masks inside their market and that they would sue Governor Gretchen Whitmer because of her mandate. However, the state dismissed their suit, claiming that there was no legal standing. Because of the family's stance on COVID-19, the Health Department of Northwest Michigan called Friske Orchards "an imminent danger to public health."
Friske Orchards is now owned by Richard's grandchildren and still operates under their evangelical philosophy. They're closed on Sundays, and if you visit their website, they'll implore you to find Jesus. They even have a link to Samaritan's Purse, a charity run by Franklin Graham.
I've been to Deja Vu so many times that I know strippers have morals, too. It's strange but true. One of their codes of conduct is that they shouldn't go home with customers. Years ago, there was a dancer at the Vu in Kalamazoo who got fired for going home with a customer. Allegedly, he paid her—a struggling single mother—$100 to spend the night at his place. He returned the next day because she left her purse at his house.
From the sound of things, old Kornelius paid the lady to stay at his place, which is just down the street from the Lansing Deja Vu. Since many of the girls there are MSU students, they tend to be young and naïve and willing to do anything for money, especially if the customer is wealthy. This may turn out to be a damning case for Friske, a man whose family was built on so-called "family values" but lacks any.
If it were true that Friske solicited the girl for prostitution, it could harm not only Deja Vu's reputation but also that of the entire strip club industry, which has been the victim of attacks for decades. Many who have fought against strip clubs have spread many untrue stigmas regarding the industry, including that most of the girls are prostitutes and some are victims of human trafficking. Yet, the people who attack strip clubs and other facets of the adult entertainment industry have their own problems.
Earlier, we mentioned Charles Keating and his anti-smut films. He made them with the Catholic Church, who fought long and hard to hide the facts regarding their abuse of alter boys and Native Americans for generations. In a 1979 episode of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, the gang confronts a fellow teen who exposes them to adult magazines. Of course, Bill Cosby was a regular at the Playboy Mansion and did go to prison for a short time for one of his many sexual assaults. In the 1990s, I attended the youth ministry at New Hope Community Church in Williamsburg, MI. Their youth pastor, John Clark, was hellbent on telling teens that sex was bad and thinking about sex was a sin. Well, he started his own church, West Side Community in Traverse City and embezzled $500,000 from the ministry. Before he could be investigated, Clark committed suicide by shotgun just before Christmas in 2019.
And then, there's Ronald Brown, the puppeteer who was one of the stars of a 1980s Christian children's show, Joy Junction. The most notorious clip of the program showed Brown and his puppet, Marty, discussing his friends looking at "dirty pictures." In the end of the segment, Ronald and his puppet agreed that "dirty pictures" were bad and cited a vague Bible verse about fleeing from wickedness.
Over a decade ago, Brown was a subject of an investigation because of a chat room post where he said that he wanted to murder children. The police investigated his trailer and discovered hundreds of pictures of child pornography in there. In 2013, Brown was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Once he leaves prison, Brown - who made a living entertaining children - will have to register as a sex offender.
Now, the adult entertainment world ain't perfect, either. The aforementioned Harry Mohney spent three years in prison for tax evasion in the early 90s. He didn't want to help fund a government that was hellbent on destroying him. Ron Jeremy - once one of the most-revered stars of adult cinema - allegedly raped a woman a few years ago. However, his case was thrown out of court because he now has dementia. Linda Lovelace allegedly did her scenes at the gunpoint of her husband. The list goes on.
The sad truth is that religion is nothing more than mind control. I really don't want someone who is worse off than I am telling me how to get to Heaven. My philosophy on faith is the same as Pixies: if man is five, then the devil is six. And if the devil is six, then God is seven. Nobody's perfect. If I pay a cute girl $30 to sit on my lap, I shouldn't be shamed for it. Hell, I'd rather see that $30 go to her than it going to a preacher who's going to use that exact money to go to the same strip club that he preaches against.
Look at what's going on in several states such as Texas and Louisiana. They're now forcing people to use their drivers license to access adult websites. Even worse, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing several websites, such as PornHub. According to Paxton - who made headlines after he hired his mistress to be one of staffers - the sites don't do enough to guard themselves from underage viewers. Simply put, he's making it tougher - even for adults - to access adult content online.
Let's not forget that recently, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry ordered all classrooms in the state to display the Ten Commandments, a direct violation of the separation of church and state. So far, several families have stood up to the governor, and the ACLU is on their side.
What might be more embarrassing is that Louisiana ranks 47th in education in America. A recent caller to The Howard Stern Show spoke about her experience living there. She spoke about putting her children in daycare, and in their guidebook, they spelled "children" as "childern." She complained to the daycare's owner, who claimed that the spelling was correct. She even had to use a temp service to get a job, and the person there asked for her "résumé," but pronounced it "ree-soom."
But what was even more frightening regarding this poor woman’s experience living in Louisiana was the fact that her child’s second-grade teacher was also a Pentecostal minister and told her class that the world was coming to an end. In addition, corporal punishment is practiced at the school, and she was saddened to see her child come home with red hands because the teacher smacked them with a ruler.
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, the state superintendent has ordered all public schools to have Bibles and teach from them. Clearly, this is nothing more than a weak-sauce attempt to force the right's sordid views of Christianity onto the American people, especially children. The same goes for several other states, like Florida, which are now forcing children to learn from the curriculum PragerU, created by far-right-wing radio talk show host Dennis Prager. Among the things Prager teaches is that slavery taught Black people basic skills to prepare them for life. Nope! It taught them that as long as a white guy was whipping the crap out of them, they'll get their dinner.
You see, this is why I vote Democrat. I don’t want to give my taxes away to the wealthy. I don’t want to be 50 years old and working at Walmart because my job shut down due to right-wing lunacy. I don’t want the Supreme Court to become even more right-leaning than it currently is. If there’s another pandemic, I want the entire country to shut down, not make it a state issue. And of course, I DON'T WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO TAKE AWAY MY FUCKING PORN!!!
I understand that the right is adamantly trying to not only criminalize pornographers and those who view their works, but they also want to force America to become a Christian nation. The ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation published a proposal called Project 2025 that would not only do all this, but also eliminate America's laws protecting the environment, women's rights, and reform laws that affect the LGBTQ+ community. Word has it that if Drumpf is elected president, he will allow Project 2025 to act as a template for his lawmaking.
Because of all this, I am happier knowing that President Biden dropped out of the race. During his presidency, more Americans are getting good jobs that pay well. Also, he stood up to corporations by standing with unions. However, he is in cognitive decline and knows that it's time to pass the torch to someone younger who can get the job done. True, Kamala Harris is not perfect. As attorney general of California, she prosecuted cannabis users even though she smoked pot herself. But, I feel that she is more progressive than Biden and can beat Drumpf in a cage match.
In a future BOTD, I will talk more about the importance of the adult entertainment industry. In the meantime, remember, kids: this country was founded on the principle of freedom from religion. If we end up as a society that forces religion on its citizens, our founding fathers will be spinning in their graves.
As a closing thought, here's a question for those on the right: How would you like it if the government were run by Muslims and they outlawed the sale of bacon?
Could happen.
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