I don't know that I'd single these guys out. The Onion can be just as bad. But I'm glad Landover is out there, if only because of the number of serious sites who gullibly link to them and describe them as though they were for real.

Are you sure that's not a parody, or a fake site? It just seems a bit over the top to me.

Oh, wait. I just saw that Xrlq said it is.

Then they are prejudice against Landover Baptists. I thought that was the point of the post.

Dean? Are you kidding? This site has been one of the most well known liberal run parodies around since the internet came online. I hope you are not that stupid. Sheesh, the future of liberal America can't tell it's head from it's ass.

It is YOU who make people vomit. I can only hope you are kidding. Do you have a high school degree?

The Landover Baptist site IS a parody.

The previous poster is way out of line.

A site making fun of blacks or jews or something would be a huge bigotry scandal, but a site making fun of Baptists is happy fun parody time.

And yes, where I come from, it is "correct" to call black people "black", seeing as "african american" makes no sense anywhere but America.

Somebody has waaaaaay too much frikkin time on their hands and a humongous axe to grind...the links at that place go multiples deep, and through numerous domain names.

What a bunch of crap...anyone have any background on who actually is behind this steaming pile of donkey poop?

A site making fun of blacks or jews or something would be a huge bigotry scandal, but a site making fun of Baptists is happy fun parody time.

That's because blacks and jews are BORN that way -Christians who believe that everyone is going to hell CHOOSE to be that way.

There is a big diffence between being born a certain way, and choosing to believe something, you stupid fucking piece of shit.

God Damn! Americans are so fucking retarded - and you are a poster child you stupid nit wit.

God did not WRITE the bible, idiot.

Dean,
The reason that this site is not "hateful" rests in at least one article. Take a look at This article. It describes an organization which is basically generous, but still a bit naive. Given how many people have fallen for the Nigerian E-mail scam when it plays to their sense of greed, wouldn't it be nice to think of someone falling for it out of a sense of do-goodness?

Hell, given things like this site (courtesy of the SoCal Law blog), I don’t know how much parody there is in the rest of the Landover Site...

Of course, given the low level of discourse on this particular topic, I wonder how long it will be before Dean shuts the comments down and deletes them all...

Whoa, kids. Everybody relax. It was a joke site. And either way, yeah, it's tasteless and kind of funny in that unfunny way. But where the hell are y'all getting off slinging around these kind of insults at each other? It's just words on a screen. Take a deep breath. Go outside. Find a healthy outlet for all that rage. Stop calling each other idiots. It's just hateful and ignorant. And rude.

DF

Come on Dean, their Jar-Jar Binks Sex Doll Story is one of the funniest parodies I've seen in years.

For someone who doesn't profess to be devout, methinks you doth protest too much at those poking fun at Christians. You seem to take offense at anything perceived to be opposing them in any way.

Guilt complex? Wished you believed more? Past period of attacking them you're trying to forget?

Therapy at a distance is so hard, and I can't make it up there for the party, ack.

Hey. You know.

I stumbled across this site which talked about the Jews and all their money, the funny hooked-nosed dinks who sat around every night counting their change and cackling over how they were screwing over the Protestant White Man.

I mean, it was really funny, you know what I'm saying? Not that anyone should take it seriously....

I came across a site for the "Nazi party of America". It was so outrageous that I assumed it had to be a joke, but my dad kept insisting that the site was legit. I know there is a Nazi party, but geeze, that site was ridiculous.

Actually Dean, since one of your "open-minded" commenters already said that Christians are fair game whereas blacks and Jews aren't, since Christians weren't "born that way," isn't the real comparison to anti-Muslim hate sites?

Transform every page and graphic on the Landover Baptist website into an anti-Muslim "parody," and let's see how long it would last on the Internet before all those liberals who guffaw at poking fun of Protestant Christians recoil in horror at such a no-doubt "bigoted" and "racist" display.

Oh, and I find it especially amusing that, even though I mentioned in the very comment being disputed that I wasn't American, the disputer still assumed I was. Good work.

"If you send an e-mail submission to this site, you are certifying that you are 18 years or older and you are granting The Landover Baptist Parody Website a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display your submission (in whole or part including your personal e-mail address) and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed."

Hey. Let's face it.

If you think Christ was the world's redeemer and that salvation from Hell depends on faith in Him, you are a closed-minded and vile bigot.

However, if you question the above assertion, you are an open-minded liberal who is wrongly attacked by horrid closed-minded philistines.

It only stands to reason, right?

Landover Baptist gets me laughing out loud even though I'm one of the people they make fun of.

Dean, they have all of Voltaire's prejudices and none of his wit.

one of the reasons i do laugh at Landover Baptist: The Reverend Fred Phelps of Des Moines Iowa. Real person. Walking, breathing version of LBC. The only thing is that for Rev Phelps, that's how he really is.

Maybe you saw pictures of him and his sheep during the trial of the killers of Matthew Shepard carrying the "God hates fags" sign. The far right's version of a career protester.

LBC is funny because it pokes at -some- (not THE) truth. Does it bother you that LBC is really not so far from the truth in some congregations?
I'm not trying to be confrontational. I really want to know.

Well, pril, would it bother you that the porch-sqatting, Colt-45-sucking, "I can barely read but I have natural rythm", "blame it on the white man" stereotype actually describes some real black people?

Last time I read, Phelps has about 75 people who show up at his weekly sermons on Sunday mornings.

By comparison, I've had an accountant an a lawyer who were both Jewish, and both of whom made more more money than I do. Which I don't find significant. Do you, pril?

What's your point exactly? That it's okay to viciuosly stereotype and feed prejudices, so long as you can find real-life examples of what you're stereotyping?

I can find lazy black people with big hands and big lips with a good sense of rhythm but who can't parse a proper English sentence to save their souls.

I really can.

So what's your point?

But can you find two?

I can find lazy black people with big hands and big lips with a good sense of rhythm but who can't parse a proper English sentence to save their souls.

You've just described my boss, the Baptist.

But what's YOUR point? It's a parody site. There are worse sites out there that are NOT parody sites. There ARE sites out there that treat various races, and various religions, in a manner that is much worse than the LBC site.

Your outrage seems to depend on the idea that no one would dare to do that to Muslims, or blacks. But they WOULD, and they DO.

Ah, but come on. Everyone should acknowledge that the only politically correct bigotry is despising Christians.

I'm curious, Dean: to you consider Little Green Footballs to be offensive, for similar reasons? I notice your blogroll doesn't link to LGF. (Not a criticism, you're not obligated of course. Just, as I said, curious.)

And where do you draw the line between (legitimate) criticism or parody of someone's political beliefs, and (illegitimate) criticism or parody of their religious beliefs? Especially when the latter informs the former?

R the racist lyrics of David Allen Coe supposed 2 b inflammatory or parody? I'm just asking because I find this subject 2 be n the same vein, and I honestly don't know.

Websites like this present (to me) an interesting case. On the one hand, nowhere on the website does it specifically promote "hate-mongering", and, during my admittedly cursory scanning of this extensive site, I never actually saw beliefs ridiculed which I thought shouldn't be.

Most hate sites propogate information they claim to be true about the groups they despise: white hate groups will publish misinformation about, for example, Martin Luther King.

This site makes no specific accusations, and is clearly intended as parody.

So to call this site "hate-mongering" seems to me to be incorrect.

What it does do is ridicule a specific group's beliefs. It doesn't really say that people who hold those beliefs are evil, and it identifies them entirely by the beliefs being attacked on the site. But it does ridicule them.

Of course, Dean just called the proprietors of the site hateful, ignorant bigots, presumably because of their belief in their cause of ridiculing the Landover church. We can go around in circles on this indefinitely.

Anyhow, the question Dean poses is, am I and others being hypocritical in not condemning this site along with hate sites aimed at other groups?

Well, let's keep in mind that Southern Baptist organizations themselves promote the idea that homosexuals are bad people. Clearly, they are promoting ideas which, even assuming, as they probably do, that homosexuality is a choice, are equally bad as those on the site Dean links to.

Being a Jew or a black person is not only a matter of beliefs - which may justifably be parodied - but also a matter of culture and/or race. Hate groups who target such groups are not attacking people's ideas, they are attacking specific people, and claiming them to be inherently less worthy. If I was to make a website ridiculing the beliefs of the hypothetical Jews who believe any critic of Israel is an anti-semite, THAT would be equivalent to this site.

Let's be clear on this. Religion is something people can choose, and they choose a specific religion which presumably matches their beliefs. If they choose to believe that homosexuality is wrong, ridiculing that belief is perfectly valid expression - and quite different from implying the inferiority of an entire culture or race.

So to sum up: The site's proprietors probably are bigoted and intolerant. But their site does not promote hate, or "de-humanize". It does not attack people, it attacks an organization, and a set of ideas. It may misrepresent their beliefs, but it does so in a form that is clearly a parody. It probably isn't a positive addition to the Web - but it isn't hate-speech.

Sorry for the lengthy posting, the topic interested me, and I wanted to work through it.

Interesting post Dean, despite the hyperbole.

So let us be clear: if you think homosexuality is sinful, you are a moral monster deserving of nasty stereotyping. Right?

So I take it that you despise Muslims and orthodox Jews and faithful Catholics, Skarl, and find it utterly acceptable to stereotype them in the most vicious ways imaginable. As long as it's in the name of parody, it's cool. Right?

Hyperbole? Yeah, whatever.

I've seen a good deal of parody on sites run by neo-Nazis and the Klan. Parody not much different than the "Landover Baptist" hate site.

To Kevin's question: the muslim-haters who infest LGF's comments bother me a great deal. Yes, that's part of why I don't link it, even though I think the guy who runs LGF is not anti-Muslim.

Baptist organizations themselves promote the idea that homosexuals are bad people.

Not to troll, but no, most of them don't. Most of them promote the idea that all people are bad people, and homosexuality is one of the many, many ways in which some people choose to show it.

Getting hateful over one of those ways is, itself, also one of those ways. See how many times you can circularly apply THAT to itself. ;)

Let's not forget why the Southern Baptist Church schismed in the first place, folks. It was SPECIFICALLY because they were in favor of continuing slavery, and they broke away from those Baptists up North when they came out in favor of emancipation.

Which is why I find black Southern Baptist congregations particularly ironic.

And my fiancee, who was raised a Baptist (not sure which flavor off the top of my head), left the church over their attitude towards gays, and that was a few years before she realized she was bi. They wanted kids to invite their gay friends to come to church with them so they could get some good old fire and brimstone condemnation, and start being 'cured'.

Disgusting.

Dean, isn't this horse about beat to death yet? :-)

My favourite: the "what would Jesus do?" thong.

I am quite bothered by the implication that there are no Web sites making fun of Jews and Jewish religion. I see this as a serious oversight on the part of the global society we all live in.
To make amends, I shall spend this evening telling blond jokes to my wife. Later I shall register the domain 'HeebsAreCrap.com'. and inviting submissions.
Jacky Mason jokes are welcome.

OK, try this site:

http://www.thedoormagazine.com/home.html

It's a parody site, by an organization that has published scathing parodies of some fundamentalist Christians for decades.

The publishers are also (dare I say it?) Christian.

You'll find most of the Landover site material is tame by comparison.

The Sugar Beet is a Mormon parody site, run by Mormons.

Probably not much of it will make sense to those not raised in that bizarre faith, as most of it's inside baseball, but hey, you gotta be able to laugh at yourself!

Mr. Mercer,
I went to the Sugar Beet site and had a look. Very good stuff (this. for example). I’m not a member of the Church of LDS, but I think I caught just about everything. Like “sugar Beet”/”Honey bee”; or is there something deeper there?

I forget the exact reference myself, but the sugar beet reference is about some plan to grow beets in the desert or something, it's specific to Mormon history in Utah.

To someone not familiar with the Mormon Church, the site would mostly seem funny in a generic, making fun of whitebread Protestants in general, kind of way. To those who were raised in the Church, whether members still or not (I bailed as soon as I was in college), it is an even bigger gut buster.

I didn't even realize until recently that it was run by CURRENT Mormons, such is the acidity of some of it's jibes (the one's outsiders are not likely to even notice :-)

well i was going to craft a long ol' comment, but i think i'll think it over and blog it instead. Because i'm on the same train as you, Dean, on a good bit of what you post about, except this.

I don't find the LBC site nearly half as offensive as one of westboro baptist churches sites, www.godhatesfags.com and i think as long as there are churches that behave this way, there will be targets for people who put the LBC site together.

Pril, if someone wanted to make a website called www.godhatesphelps.com (heh, the site DOES exist) and satirize Rev. Phelps, I would wholehartedly support it, since Phelps' belief in the personalization of sin runs counter to true Christian thinking. ("Hate the sin, love the sinner.") But Landover Baptist does more than target the likes of Phelps, and that's why it offends moderate Christians and some people who may not be Christian but appreciate the deep religious faith of others.

Dean:

No, of course not. I don't think being opposed to homosexuality makes someone "a moral monster." I guess I was insufficiently clear. My point was that the morality of making general statements about a group (homosexuals or Baptists who consider homosexuality a sin) varies depending on how that group is defined.

Ridiculing people because of their beliefs is different from ridiculing people because of their race. As I said, I don't support the existence of this website. But I don't think we can equate vicious parody of a religion with racial hatred.

I don't "despise Muslims and orthodox Jews and faithful Catholics." And frankly, if this is the level of debate you encourage on your site, I probably won't be commenting again. However, I still think parodying religion is different from disseminating racist propaganda.

Let's imagine that someone made a website parodying my beliefs. I'm moderately left-wing, and I support social programs, including a social safety net.

Frankly, there are hundreds of sites out there which ridicule my principles and claim that anyone who holds them is a jackbooted Communist thug, anti-American, stupid, yet evil, etc, etc.

I'm more or less atheist, so my belief in our responsibilities towards others, as expressed in my support of left-wing policies, are, essentially, my religion. But I would never ask that my moral principles be protected from debate, or that the movements someone supports (whether they be for same-sex marriage, or boycotting Harry Potter) should be immune from criticism.

landoverbaptist.org is unfair and vicious. But we have to draw a line between speech that criticises people's beliefs, and speech that criticises people. To put it in the simplest way possible, this is the distinction between saying "You are stupid" and saying "That's a stupid idea". The first is entirely unacceptable to me. The second is not.

History is full of stupid ideas that were widely held. I think that evangelical Christianity is one of them. I also think that organized religion is a poor system for exploring spirituality. This may offend some people, and I don't go out of my way to spread my opinions, but anyone who thinks that saying that is equivalent to a statement like "Christians are stupid" needs to think harder. At a certain level, opposition to parody of ones beliefs becomes comparable to an inability to debate ideas without allowing personal bias to interfere, an ability that I consider highly moral. Ideas can be stupid, and attacking them can be acceptable.

SFT: Notice that I didn't say "all". Still, I appreciate the correction. And no, I don't hate homosexuals, or hate homosexual haters, or hate those who hate homosexual haters... ;-)

Still, I do find the idea that homosexuality is sinful worthy of ridicule.

I just came to your site for the first time, and this is the first link i went to. Are all your links to parodies without telling people so?

Why not click on some and find out?

Skarl et al. I think part of the reason that some are offended at the Landover site is not that it is parodic per se, but rather that it feels as if a double standard is being applied with respect to free speech vs. hate speech. It's OK to put together the Landover site, but if I read Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion that makes me an anti-Semite. In a world where people on the "Right" think that folks on the "Left" are constantly looking for the slightest bit of non-PC behavior to harp on someone for being "racist" or "discriminatory", the Landover site is felt to be tremendously hypocritical. It's not unlike the time that the well-known champion of black rights, Jesse Jackson, made his infamous "hymie town" remark.

Thanks for the quick blurb about our web site. Yes, we are all Moromons, but we like to remind ourselves that we're also not Lemmings. Like many faiths, ethnicities, races, and other groups, we have found that many of us take ourselves way too seriously. It is our hope to bring humor into a Mormon (hell, even x-Mormons get a kick out of us) person's life, and if that doesn't work, we'll settle for making each other laugh. It is our money and a LOT of time that makes The Sugar Beet happen, so we need to make sure someone is busting a gut.

Oh, and Landover is very much a parody. They're doing much more than you may realize.

Eric
(hidden) writer, The Sugar Beet

well i think that i have the best hate sit ever made so if any of you would like to check it out go ahead......gw