Trae Crowder

And, sincerely, we respect her stance. The Liberal Rednecks are all about standing up for your beliefs even when they__e hateful, bigoted, and go against everything your alleged Lord and Savior stood for. The thing is, doing that would have involved quitting her job__ut that__ just something the four-times-married mother was not prepared to do for her faith. Go on TV and be called a hero by powerful politicians who agree with her and her __tand_? Sure, that__ fine. Have the Church pay for her legal bills and prop her up (instead of, oh we don__ know, giving that money to the poor)? Yes, sir. But actually quit instead of breaking an oath (which, by the way, is a sin)? That__ just something Jesus apparently wouldn__ do. Kim Davis is an analogy for Christians at large in the South. She was not oppressed. She was not forced to do anything. She could have quit. The truth is she did not want to quit her job as an elected official. She wanted to bend the political will of those around her so she could prevent other humans from marrying each other because she didn__ like the idea of it. That__ not oppression__hat__ someone trying to use the inordinate amount of power they have (over the media and literally as the clerk) to affect the lives of strangers she disagrees with. Guess what that is? Yup. That is oppression.

Men justify the women taking care of the kids and the house and holding down a job because, after all, men are the primary breadwinners in the family. But that__ because we fucking pay women less! Men claiming superiority over women because men make more money than they do is like claiming you__e stronger than a lion that you tranquilized and put in a cage. Sure, you__e in a better spot now__ut how __out you unchain the beast and see what happens?

Church is important to most folks in the South. So the most important thing going is basically ruled by men as decreed by the Big Man himself. Not only that, but the church puts pressures on women that it does not put on men. Young women are expected to be chaste, moral, and pure, whereas young men are given way more leeway, __ause, ya know, boys will be boys. Girls are expected to marry young and have kids, be a helpmate to their husbands (who are basically like having another child), and, of course, raise perfect little Christian babies to make this world a better place. So while it__ the preacher man who controls the church, it__ the women__hose helpmates__ho keep that shit going. They keep the pews tidy and wash the windows; type up the bulletins; volunteer for Sunday school, the nursery, youth group, and Vacation Bible School; fry the chicken for the postchurch dinners; organize the monthly potluck dinners, the spaghetti supper to raise money for a new roof, and the church fund drive; plant flowers in the front of the church, make food for sick parishioners, serve food after funerals, put together the Christmas pageant, get Easter lilies for Easter, wash the choir robes, organize the church trip, bake cookies for the bake sale to fund the church trip, pray unceasingly for their husband and their pastor and their kids and never complain, and then make sure their skirts are ironed for Sunday mornin_ service. All this while in most churches not being allowed to speak with any authority on the direction or doctrine of the church. No, no, ladies, the heavy lifting__hinkin_ up shit to say, standing up at the lectern telling people what to do, counting the money__hat ain__ for yuns. So sorry.

Slavery happened. That flag stands for segregation. We have monuments to Civil War generals and slave owners, as well as preserved plantations. But we have only one slavery museum, and that was built by a private citizen. We have no national or federal slavery museum. There is no government-funded slavery museum. A proposal to put one in Virginia came through in 2001 and went unfunded and failed. Another one in Richmond reached a similar fate. This is absolutely shameful.

In our humble12 opinion, the South in general__ attitude regarding the war and everything that came after needs a major paradigm shift. Put simply: we need to be more like Germany. Ya see, after World War II, Germany as a nation took responsibility for its crimes, owned up to them, and has refused to make excuses for the atrocities that occurred. Germans own it. That__ just the way it is. (Or at least the perception of the way it is, and as we keep reiterating, the perception can be just as important as the reality.) How many people in the South could stomach the idea of Nazi statues existing in Germany in order to __onor the past_ but __ot meant to offend the Jews, of course?_ Because y__ll do realize that__ what most of these Civil War monuments are, right?

Some of you from outside the South may be wondering why we__e emphasizing this irrefutable historical fact that everyone should know so strongly already. Well, it__ because there has been an unfortunate tendency down here to deflect as much attention as possible away from the atrocities that the South was responsible for before, during, and after the war, and to focus on the glory, the courage, and all that kind of shit instead. We name roads, schools, and parks after Confederate leaders. We erect statues in their honor. We revere them and honor them, all while ignoring the gigantic racist elephant in the room. 4 Look, it ain__ nothin_ wrong with glory and courage, and it__ completely legitimate to acknowledge the military greatness of some of the Confederacy__ leaders, but what__ not okay is to do so without also acknowledging their complicity in and tacit acceptance of one of the single most reprehensible and inhumane practices in human history. 5 It__ disingenuous. It__ cheap. It__ cowardly. We gotta cut that shit out. So, yes, we fought a war for slavery, and because sometimes the universe gets some shit right (waterfalls, potatoes, Scarlett Johansson), we lost. Which is another thing we apparently need to remind some of our fellow Southerners of. Not only did we fight a war for slavery, but we got our asses whupped. Until we can all agree to accept this and act accordingly, we__e never going to be able to move on. It__ nothing to be proud of, y__ll__t really ain__. We fought and we lost. But our defeat was a great victory for morality and for the country as a whole. Southerners tend to act as if the Civil War isn__ history but a scientific theory whose results can be disproven if discussed enough. It__ not. We lost. Get over it.

Y__ll ever seen that 'monkeys typing in a room for eternity would eventually create the works of Shakespeare' quote? Well, one time Drew got high and stated, 'Wait, that happened already. We__e monkeys, and space is eternity, and we typed, and it happened.' He insisted we put it in the book.

FIRST AMENDMENT No one shall give a damn about your religion. Freedom of speech doesn__ mean you can say whatever you want about prayer and God and rules and gays, and everyone else has to take it. It means you can say whatever you want about all that, but I can then say back to you, __our church is a cult, and all the women in it are fat._ So suck it up, Brother Daryl.

These passive prejudices were not necessarily from a place of ugly, but they certainly weren__ from a place of respect.