Guess the state!

[theweaselking]

American politician performs "exorcism" on daughter to get rid of the demons that make her argue with her sister.

Bonus points: The daughter is a legal adult.
Extra bonus points: She thought this was idiotic, resisted, and was injured in the process.
The king of all bonus points: This isn't the first time.

Comments

[elffin.livejournal.com]

*boggles*

*boggles some more*

Man. Manomanoman. Please, pretty please, let her press charges.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

I could tell stories about my youth that frighteningly mirror this, but I won't, because it's far enough in the past that just reliving it is pointless.

Suffice to say, I know that what this girl said is true, and it DOES happen way too often.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Florida!

*checks*

Man, I hate having this happen for me to be right about.

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

I had the same thought process. It's a shame.

[kookiemaster.livejournal.com]

This has marketing potential.

"Bertolli, making the world a better (and tastier) place, one demon at a time"

Seeing what silly things some parents do to try to control their "misbehaving" kids (freako prison-like bootcamps in the middle of nowhere) ... I'm not even suprised.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Exorcism, my arse. Dude is just trying to set up a "freedom of religion" defense for abusive behaviour.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Uh, yeah. Protestant exorcisms are like that.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

All Protestant really means is "Not Catholic or Orthodox", so ... yeah. You can't "understand Protestants", you can only break them down into their various denominations and try to "understand" that. It's like saying "I thought I understood physics, but now I realize that I absolutely don't." While at first it seems like a logical statement, WHICH physics don't you understand? There's a lot of different branches out there...

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember when I thought there were 2 kinds of churches, Catholic and Protestant, and everybody went to one or the other.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

...utterly off-topic, but is that Abel in your icon?

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

What, subjecting an unwilling person to forcible confinement and utterly random torments and/or degradations? I know at least some Protestants with more sense than that!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I know many more sensible protestants. That doesn't change that the "protestant exorcism" starts at "burn the witch!" and goes downhill from there.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

PS: Anyone seriously concerned with real demons in the real world, which need to be driven out of the really-possessed victim by yelling and dousing them with the real, physical holy liquid of your choice, by definition isn't working with "sense", at all. Quite the opposite of sense, in fact.

[kookiemaster.livejournal.com]

Medically speaking, I think that unusual beliefs are not considered pathological if they are coherent with your cultural context. Hence why if I were to say that I speak with the ghosts of my ancestors, I would likely be labelled as psychotic and locked up whereas another person who's culture sees talking with spirits of the deceased as commonplace and part of normal life wouldn't.

Whether that makes sense (or is desirable) is still, however, open to debate.

I'm not a doctor but I have opinions -

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Pathological criteria involves the degree of problems it causes in a person's life. Psychoses are often pathological, because they are often uncontrollable, chronic, and indistinguishable from reality and/or compelling. Most people who talk with spirits or the deceased in cultures that acknoledge such behaviour as expected, do so in set and setting, a prescribed time and place and sometimes prescribed social station.

What we have here is pathological - it's someone who has /professionally/ been employed to understand and uphold the laws of the United States - and the basis of those laws, in and of itself a culture of respect for the rights and liberties of individuals - who then disregards them all because she finds a compelling, uncontrollable, rationalised (indistinct from reality) action against another person without their permission and thereby outside her social station and arguably in a way that should destroy her career. That the victim is her child demonstrates her inability to separate reality (her career, the law) from her fantasy - that her child was raised with.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you're saying is nonsensical here. Is it:

• The idea of demons,
• The idea of possession,
• The possibility of performing an exorcism to (potentially) end such a possession,
• The means proposed for the exorcism (yelling and dousing with liquid, holy or otherwise), or
• Something I didn't list?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

How about:

All of the above

Belief in the real-world independent existence of demons? Nonsense.
Belief that these totally real demons can possess people? Nonsense.
Belief in exorcism to get rid of these real demons? Nonsense.
Belief that these real demons can be gotten rid of if you just find the right magic words: Nonsense.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Ah. Well, I'm with you on the last one, and my jury's still out on the middle two, although I lean towards a qualified positive on them.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to bet you don't mean real, physical demons, who exist independently and with their own intelligence and free will, who have the ability to make you do anything they want but who always choose to make you get drunk and yell at your siblings.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

who have the ability to make you do anything they want but who always choose to make you get drunk and yell at your siblings.

You know, now that you mention it, that last bit does sound a bit dicey.

[kookiemaster.livejournal.com]

It was my favourite part of those D&D bashers (and I guess more recently Harry Potter bashers). Their main arguments implied that they believed that people can do REAL magic and summon entities and fireball their friends.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Jack Chick Lied To Me.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Yup. I'm arguably a member of these peoples' target group, and it isn't really too surprising to me how similar the mindsets can be; magical thinking is very common among both practitioners of magic (as you might expect, though not quite as common as most people outside it seem to believe) AND those who believe that what the first group is doing is wrong wrong wrong and condemning them to a hell that the aforementioned first group doesn't believe in anyway.

Follow all that?

Of course, whenever I bring this up among my fellow Pagans they get very annoyed. I can't imagine why.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Win for your icon.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

the only problem in this case is the child is not a minor, but an adult. This is kidnapping and assault.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

...this is the ONLY problem in this case?

[elffin.livejournal.com]

I used vague language. Apologies. It's an idiom, and it ought to have been "The problem with the argument presented is ..."

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Abuse can be inflicted between adults too; there is an overlap between "abusive" and "criminal". In any case, I don't see the relevance of the distinction to what I wrote. Either way, the claim that "this is an exorcism" rings pretty hollow to my ear; more like a legal smokescreen.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

Agreed. In any case - Oh I hope she presses charges.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, letting that kind of thing go is unlikely to lead anywhere good.

[siouxsyn.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know what the twin sister thinks. Does she cop it too? Is she horrified? Or does she make her sister mad so that Mommy and Daddy will do it again?