L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

It is the duty of every student to respect Liberty’s Statement of Doctrine and Purpose. They may not engage in any activity on or off campus that would compromise the testimony or reputation of the University or cause disruption to Liberty’s Christian learning environment.

Guess what Liberty University now considers to be compromising to their testimony. Nope, it’s not the evangelical porn club. It’s not even the Jews for Jesus pig roast.

It’s the LU College Democrats Club. You can read the entire e-mail sent to the head of the Democrats Club at theWashington Post. Or, if you’d rather read the news from a more fundamentally approved paper, you can read the article at the Washington Times.

Am I surprised by this move? Not one bit. After all, Liberty was Jerry Falwell’s baby. And as we all know, Jerry Falwell was many things in this life…but a good Christian was not one of them. Good hypocrite, yes. Good manipulator, of course. But I refuse to believe that he correctly represented Christianity with the hatred and castigation that he spewed throughout his lifetime. Let’s just review some of his “greatest hits” in his honor:

• AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
• It appears that America’s anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.
• The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.
• There is no separation of church and state. Modern U.S. Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
• Good Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.

That last one I added just because it represents to me the keystone of why people like Jerry Falwell get away with peddling their hate and ignorance to misguided masses: Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you exactly what I want you to believe. And since his death, his like-minded son has been running his legacy, including Liberty University.

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I didn’t go to this Offred Reprogramming Center like I was supposed to. I’ve changed many of my opinions since I last blogged regularly. I’ve even changed many of my opinions regarding religion. But one thing that has not changed is my absolute intolerance for this kind of manipulative mind fucking. Jerry Falwell represented everything I saw wrong with organized religion, everything that I still find vile and reprehensible. I’m so very glad that I have met others beyond the scope of Falwell’s narrow and bigoted religious views who have helped me see hope for the future of the religious finding its right path in this country.

Unfortunately, however, schools like Liberty University (or worse…let’s not forget that Bob Jones University is still pumping out its own Baptist sock puppets) continue to mold young minds into the shape of religious perversion that these fundamentalists have decided is God’s will and God’s message.

Too bad Reverend Falwell can’t give us a little sign as to what that message should really be…

I think someone keeps stealing time from me. I always think I have more time to do things during the day…and then I keep coming up short. What’s up with that?

So this past weekend I ended up at the mall. It was a “necessary evil” trip…unfortunately, it didn’t include Kira Nerys or Odo (and if you get that geek reference, I’m imaginary high-fiving you right now). My part of the necessary evil was that I needed to take one of my watches to the jeweler for a new battery.

I hate malls. HATE them. It’s not just the overwhelming sense of so many people crammed like cattle inside one building (although that has a huge role in the enmity, since I do hate people). No, this hatred springs from the well of teen angst that drilled into my soul many, many moons ago.

Remember when everyone who was anyone in the teen safari was a mall rat? It was the cool place to be seen, the replacement hangout when skating rinks began to slowly fade into the ephemera of former awesomeness.

I remember when we finally got our own mall. I remember going there with my parents when it first opened. It was the summer before I started high school. I was a fat, fashionless introvert with acne and no self esteem. I was the hippopotamus to the mall rat lions. Teenagers can smell internalized inferiority like dogs can smell fear.

Going with high school friends made the mall slightly less traumatic. So did losing a lot of weight and no longer dressing like I was a lost member of the Von Trapp family. In fact, I dropped all color from my wardrobe minus black and purple. Lots of leather. Lots of silver jewelry. Lots of black nail polish. And, of course, this was the period of my life that gave birth to the aforementioned “sideways rooster comb.”

[Okay, this is a sad tangential moment for me: I saw a photo the other day of a famous person who styles their hair in a way similar to the sideways rooster comb. The famous person was Conan O'Brien. Whathafu?!? Seriously, see the front of his hair in this photo? Imagine this slightly higher, with bangs down to his eyes, teased out on the sides, and long in the back, but pretty much the same color. I don't know who to feel worse for: my teenaged self or Conan O'Brien.]

Still, I knew I was a poseur. I was a private school honor society nerd to whom the public school life was as alien as Q’onoS would be to a Bajoran (it also didn’t help that I made jokes like this back then, too). I was less cool than public school band members (at least they went to a school big enough to actually have a band).

It wasn’t all bad. I had my little school clique. I had my Smurfy blue Chevette. I had Suncoast and Waldenbooks, both places wherein I would sequester myself for hours of uninterrupted geekery. But to this day the mall represents all those worries and fears that only seem important when you’re a teenager, but continue to haunt you well into your dotage (I am, after all, now untrustworthy according to Bob Dylan). It’s silly, I know, but these are all the things that flood over me the instant I near a mall. Apparently, I still carry around a kernel of internalized inferiority.

Want to know the real kick in the pants? I ended up forgetting my watch at home. So I hid out in the Borders Express for a while (this is what all Waldenbooks have become in this area), bought a Star Trek novel, and scurried out into the fresh air and sun before the mall rat pheromones even had a chance to permeate my clothing. Strangely enough, these pheromones smell exactly like Sbarro pizza…