D.L. Mayfield (they/them)

Yes. The pressure to not speak up for fear of hurting the reputation of Christianity was not subtle. It was very much explicit! And who does this ultimately benefit?

I wish every person who practices a religion/faith would sit with this. This is one of the main silencing tactics of victims in religious spaces. They don't speak up because they have been told over and over again the work of the church is good and important. Much more important than their abuse 💔

Yes and this usually lines up neatly with who has power. Those with power get listened to, and those without power get silenced, dismissed, and ignored.

I'll go first: the doctrine of forgiveness for men who "stumble"

as someone who attended an evangelical seminary these guys actually spend a lot of time thinking about god's cock and probably can describe it pretty well using their theological terms

What do you think are some of the elements that need to be in place for men to not be held accountable in Christian patriarchal spaces?

Part 5 of my Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture series is going up Monday. This time I focus in on how predators get away with their crimes against children in religious authoritarian spaces.

Ammu GIF ALT: Ammu GIF

It's my birthday week and I get to choose the movie we watch as a family and my kids can't complain too much about it so you know it is time for me to bust out a real classic

Kristi Noem, just like James Dobson, loved to brag about cruelty to animals and enforced actions and policies that harmed millions of children. If Noem's heaven is real, Cricket is there and he's going to go for her fake-ass face the second she arrives.

Hey guess what the evangelical charismatic "prophet" that encouraged my mother to dive deep into end times psychosis in the late 1990s is still around and he believes in the US going to war in Iran is good news AND that there is biblical mandate to restore predator pastors to the pulpit.

A Complimentary Profile Of Jason Lee That Was Surprisingly Difficult To Publish | Defector If you walked down Colorado Boulevard in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles at some point in the past three years, you might have noticed a modest, pueblo-style beige building with “PHOTO” painted above its door. And if you had decided to go in, there was a decent chance you’d know the pers…

This @defector.com story is a good (non-political) example of why it’s not enough to have a bunch of individual reporters with newsletters running around. You need some kind of institution with the resources (and principles) to publish despite legal threats. defector.com/a-complimentar…

my first book (2020) was about online neonazis and my second book (2024) was about christian theocrats. they gained strength, voltronned and became a government. my third book (2027) is going to be a history of notable sandwiches so i hope this means we will be governed by sandwichocracy

It seems like it to me!

Tim Tebow Foundation “The number one offender in cases of child sexual abuse: biological fathers. And we have to say that out loud.” – Tim Tebow This isn’t just a tragedy. It’s a national emergency. And it’s happening...

This is from his foundation's facebook page by the way. www.facebook.com/TimTebowFoun...

Tim Tebow is literally the only white Christian man I can think of who is saying this out loud! As a reminder, this is what the statistics have shown for decades. James Dobson was informed of this in the 1980s and went out of his way to ensure this fact was not shared with his audience. Why?

“The number one offender in cases of child sexual abuse: biological fathers. And we have to say that out loud.” – Tim Tebow

For me the best resources I have found if you grew up in a religious authoritarian home are
1). somatic therapy/any practices that help you be in your body more
2). practical books like adult children of emotionally immature parents by Gibson -- it can help you set boundaries and honor yourself

This is a big deal! I look sideways at any white Christian dude who is involved in anti-trafficking work but if Tebow is actually sharing the message that we need to go after the men who are actually doing the abusing then that is great. I just can't quite figure it out.

Hey if anyone wants to help me out, I don't have the capacity to look into Tim Tebow's foundation and what he is doing currently . . . but from what I can gather, he is actually spilling the tea that it is statistically the white Christian father who is sexually exploiting and abusing children.

Chapter 12: Focus on the Fascist Family On the connection between authoritarian parenting methods and authoritarian movements in Germany and beyond

Yes and parenting methods are a through line here as well. We've been writing about this for a few years at our STRONGWILLED project if you are interested, but it sounds like you are already tracking with it: strongwilled.substack.com/p/chapter-11...

i feel strongly that anyone that thinks that there is a nefarious cabal of surgeons and doctors Transing people should be forced to try and schedule one (1) transsexual procedure

I'm also banking on a world where many of us are going to need to process the harms of evangelical parenting methods and political worldviews for a long, long time. Unfortunately.

But we get to heal, no matter what these doomers have told us.

The world is ending but I just submitted a book proposal to my agent for the first time in 4-5 years, I'm working on another one, and I'm writing a screenplay.

The more genocidal and suicidal american evangelicals get the more I am determined to invest in a future where they wither into obscurity.

Yeah I just don't think it is a huge leap to go from forced sterilizations to abortions. But what do I know. Dobson literally worked for Popenoe for 10 years and then modeled Focus on the Family after his institute. It is all very much connected.

I'm not saying he was ever pro trans people (because he wasn't). I am saying that he and other right-wing grifters studied the issues they believed could be used in the culture wars and went all in on creating propaganda around them. He is very similar to Epstein, Thiel, and Bannon in this regard.

This is similar to his later-in-life obsession with trans people. Trans folks have been such a tiny percentage of the population, but when his research council discovered data that said the general population was concerned about trans ppl in sports, he went all in on this topic.

James Dobson was not anti-abortion in the beginning of his life because he worked for a eugenicist who was involved in the forcible sterilizations of non-white women up until the 1970s (!!!!). He became anti-abortion when he realized he could use this topic to swindle people into voting republican.

omg @worstpossible.world I have a theory that I think I can prove about John Avery Whitaker being a prototypical serial child predator if you want to chat about it!!!

But if you dive into his history of working for ten years with a eugenicist who was involved in the forced sterilizations of non-white women it makes sense that he didn't start out as anti-abortion. Just like his later obsession with trans people and trans sports, he saw opportunities and took them

Moral Issues Regarding Abortion - Dr. James Dobson Family Institute Question: Dr. Dobson, would you express your opinion on the matter of abortion on demand? How do you see the moral issues involved, especially from a Christian perspective?

I mean here he says the Bible doesn't directly mention it: www.drjamesdobson.org/blogs/moral-...