There have only been a few times in my life when religion started looking real good to me. Like when my friend told me that if you went to CCD classes, you got cookies. (In my defense, I had no damn idea what CCD meant and my parents only ever let me have Frookies — cookies sweetened with fruit juice and evil.)

It’s been a different story since then. Now, whenever I hear some Christian Right idiot going all “feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians,” I immediately get the urge to burn some sage and run to the nearest hippie store for some Tarot cards like a 14-year-old who just saw The Craft for the first time. Just to make their wildest stereotypes come true.

That’s not a straw man, either. Check out this excessively mustachioed fella below, who is very concerned about all the Satanic witchcraft involving feminists. Or at least the feminists he’s quoting wildly out of context.

While the pastor’s name isn’t apparent, he’s preaching at Stedfast Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, the home of Pastor Adam Fannin, last seen wishing for the death of comedian Sarah Silverman for making a joke about Jesus more than a decade ago.

The gist of this sermon — from what I can tell — is that feminism tells ladies that they can do what they want… instead of what God and men tell them to do… and that’s basically witchcraft. Somehow.

… I want to read a definition of feminism. It’s the advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. Now that might sound nice, but this is just a mask. This is just a mask of feminism and what we’re going to do tonight, we’re going to unmask satanic feminism. We’re going to rip that mask off and show you their true heart, their true motives. The wicked things that the founders of this movement wanted to do. In 1 Samuel it says, in 15:23, it says, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected thee from being king.” That’s a great principle. When we reject the words of the Lord like they do and the Gods ways, he takes away the honor and authority that you have. And they are in rebellion. They’re in rebellion against God’s order and the right way their family should work, and they’re witches. You’re going to see just, in a second, how close they are to witches. The Satanic motto is “Do what thou will is the whole of the law.” And that’s exactly what Satan did in the Garden of Eden. He tempted Eve by getting her to do what she wanted to do instead of God’s will. And that’s exactly what they’re going to do. They’re trying to tempt ladies away from God’s will.

That is some pretty disappointing witchcraft, to be honest. No magic powers at all! I mean, if feminism is going to turn me into an evil witch, I’d hope for something more like Dark Willow than some lady eating an apple.

Mustache Guy then proceeds to quote a bunch of feminists — starting with Andrea Dworkin who is, of course, very relevant these days.

Andrea Dworkin, in 1975, said, “Only when manhood is dead, only then we will know what it is to be free.” Listen, I had to cut some of these quotes down to fit them all in here but she doesn’t… necessarily want all the men to die. She just wants the manly ones to be gone. In Isaiah 3:12, it says, “As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” When when a people turns away from the Lord, children and women begin to rule. And that’s exactly what’s happening here in America. And we really need to change that.

However, the best part of all of this is where he quotes a woman named Daphne Patai and claims she said that we have to get rid of all of the math and logic.

Daphne Patai says in Professing Feminism — she hated, she hated patriarchy so much, this is her quote — “Everything must go. Even the alleged universal disciplines of logic, mathematics, and science, and the intellectual values of objectivity, clarity, and precision on which the former depends.” Can anybody say crazy cat lady? I mean if she gets rid of, if she gets rid of mathematics she can’t even count all of her cats. In Romans 1:22, it says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” These ladies are foolish. They’ve got wicked satanic motives. They hate God. They hate His ways.

Again, not sure any of that gives us magic powers. I love cats, I don’t believe in God, I am currently single, I’m definitely a feminist… and yet I find myself entirely unable to levitate or turn water into wine. Which I guess isn’t “witchcraft” since Jesus did it, but it sure would save me a lot of money.

Anyway! The thing about this quotation is that Patai was actually criticizing the way she felt Women’s Studies was being taught. That is literally what her entire book was about, the full title being Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies. She was not saying that we should get rid of math — and I would argue that no one else was, either. But, you know, if this is something you’re going to weigh in on so heavily, you should probably at least take five minutes and read the person’s Wikipedia page.

Among the other women he cites in his sermon is British artist and writer Mina Loy, who wrote a “feminist manifesto” in 1914 that was admittedly kind of weird, but for reasons other than what Mustache Dude cites:

… And Mina Loy in 1914, she wrote the Feminist Manifesto. You can look it up online. She says, “The advantages of marriage are too ridiculously ample compared to all other trades for women.” She says, preposterously, “Luxurious support from a man can be expected without anything in return if she gets married.” So what is her solution, ’cause she hates marriage and hates God’s ways? She wants all girls, at the age of puberty, to be to have their virtue removed so that no man would want them back then. Mechanically, she says. I mean you can look it up like online. It’s crazy.

Yeah, no. First of all, Mina Loy was a Christian Scientist so I imagine she was pretty into the whole God thing. Second, Loy was criticizing the way in which virginity was exchanged for material support. Which (duh) was gross.

Also, it was 1914 — a time when things were pretty terrible for women — and so a little hyperbole is understandable. If I were living back then, I would probably want to abolish marriage as well.

… So they hate marriage. They hate the institution of marriage that God set up. They want to abolish it. And you might say, well they haven’t gotten this done. But they’ve kind of come close. 50% of marriages end in divorce. If you look at the statistics, 70% of the time, it’s the lady walking away. And it’s because of these wicked ladies’ ideas. They’ve grown up, they’ve been through their feminist system. Whenever, whenever these, we can have a lot of young guys that are looking for wives and people are looking around, and they’re like, “Where’re the good women? Where’s a good wife to get married to? Or a good young lady to get married to?” And it’s no mistake that they give out these scholarships to young ladies. They take them off to college. They separate them from their families and their protection, and they they attack their faith there, they attack their morals. And then they put them around a bunch of singles, and then they give them alcohol. And what do you get? You get a lot of fornication… It ruins their virtue. And each partner they have before marriage, it lowers their chances of having a successful marriage for the rest of their life. And this is a plan. It’s a wicked plan by these feminists to do this. It’s Satanic. It’s not God’s ways. It’s Satan’s ways…

So, we’re doing witchcraft, but instead of having magical powers, we have… scholarships? (Oh, the horror.)

In order to do things God’s way, he claims ladies need to stop doing all that book learnin’ and college goin’. “Just get married young and have a bunch of kids… Don’t fall for the scholarships and the college and the career stuff,” he says, otherwise your whole life will be terrible and you will die alone with your cats.

Which, honestly, seems infinitely preferable to having to spend however many years of your actual life lying next to a misogynistic Jesus Freak with a pornstache. I will take the cats over him any day, please and thank you.

