Students Trade Bibles for Porn
SAN ANTONIO ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ A group of atheists at the University of Texas at San Antonio is putting a novel twist on the toys-for-guns programs run by many urban police departments. But instead of toys, they are handing out porn in exchange for bibles…. “We consider the bible to be a very negative force in the history of the world,” student Ryan Walker said. Walker is part of a student group that calls itself the Atheist Agenda. Club members this week posted fliers promoting what they call the “Smut for Smut” campaign then set up a table in the student union to collect religious materials and pass out adult magazines such as Black Label and Playboy. The group is not officially sanctioned by the university and has raised the ire of several religious organizations on campus.
You just know someone’s gonna get struck by lightning for this one, eh? And like any religious discussion on a college campus, you just know that cooler heads are not about to prevail. Nosirree…. :O)
Here in Texas, where faith in God is presumed to be as automatic as the Sun rising in the east every morning, questioning said faith in such an in-your-face manner can be an invitation to some serious frontier justice. Then again, when you can get some porn out of the deal…ah, Hell, why not?
Silly? Sure. Offensive? I suppose it would be if you choose to take offense. An constitutionally-sanctioned expression of free speech and expression? Udamnbetcha. (Hey, if College Republicans can fund snipers….) Of course, this doesn’t make the porn-for-Scripture exchange a mature, adult expression, but you have to admit it’s a great way for an otherwise obscure group of zealots to get some free press, eh?
SCORE!!
“In my opinion, there are no atheists. There are fools,” Pastor Rick Hawkins of UTSA’s Family Praise Center said. “So, that would be foolish propaganda. I don’t know one believer that would take his Bible and turn it in for pornography.”
Hawkins obviously didn’t stop by the Atheist Agenda table, where several students had dropped off copies of the good book and walked away with skin mags.
Attitudes like those of Rick Hawkins AND the Atheist Agenda are merely different sides of the same coin. Both can be disturbingly intolerant and thoroughly convinced of the correctness of their views…to the point where no logic can break through the protective covering of their closed minds. It’s too bad, really, because both sides probably have something they can learn from the other. With both sides intellectually barricaded behind their philosophical and idological fortifications, it hardly seems like that a meeting of the minds is in the offing any time soon.
In the meantime, I have a feeling the adult magazines are going to get far more attention than the Bibles will….
Larry Flynt would be SO proud….
