Westboro Baptist Church is Picketing My Old Church Today

Westboro is not a Christian Church

So Westboro Baptist Church is picketing my old church today. I was planning to go, but my parents decided that it wasn't the best idea. My dad was worried that he wouldn't be able to control himself, and would end up getting into a fight. He's not exactly in favor of gay rights either, but he hates Westboro for their stance on the American military. 

The reason that Westboro is picketing another Baptist church is so ridiculous that when I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke. They were upset because Idlewild Baptist Church believes that God loves everyone. Wow. How dare they say that the creator God actually LOVES his creation? That he *gasp* made them the way they are for a reason!?! 

Westboro is one of the reasons that I no longer go to a Baptist church. When people hear Baptist, they think racism, homophobia, blind belief, and complete ignorance. The message of the Bible is love, acceptance, peace, and caring for others. 

The God I profess is not a giant judge in the sky, nor is he a blind belief handed down from my parents. He is a message of hope and peace and love to the world, and that some stupid, revolting, hatemongering cult could actually cast judgement on people in the name of MY God is sickening. Sickening! So, please remember that just as most Muslims are not terrorists, and Islam is not an evil religion, please also keep in mind that not all Christians are bigots who bomb abortion clinics and damn everyone to hell who's different from them.

Christians are not, by and large, bigots, hateful, or ignorant. I am a Christian, unashamedly, and I am a gay rights supporter, I am a feminist, I am not in a cult, and I do not hate people who disagree with me. I am also intelligent, and I'm not afraid of being proven wrong. I know what I believe and why I believe it, and I do not hold myself above anyone else for it. I am a Christian, and I am not ashamed.

Poor Representation of Women in Blockbuster Films

You know that annoying kid who always nitpicks everything in every movie you go to see?  The one who can never just be satisfied with the newest Batman movie, or who literally started crying at the butchering of Tolkien's work in the Hobbit trilogy?  Yeah.  I am that kid.  And today I'm going to complain about how Hollywood can never seem to get the women's roles up to snuff.

Clearly the best solution to keep me from ragemonstering at every movie I see is just to stop watching them, but that's clearly never going to happen.  See, I love movies, even when they suck some serious eggshells.  Now, the three main issues I have here is the lack of representation, the quality of the representation, and the minds behind the movies themselves.  

According to the New York Times, a whopping FIFTEEN PERCENT of films in 2013 actually had a female lead.  WOW!!!  What progress we've made!  *slow clap*  The ratio to women to men actors is almost three to one.  Next time you see a movie poster, look at how many women are on it, next to how many men are present.

Granted, not all movies are so unbalanced.  Some have equal representation, but, plot twist, most of those movies were directed by women.  Feminists and supporters of equality need to support more films with good female leads. And to those who are making balanced, realistic movies, keep up the good work!

 Let's also not forget that many of the women who do actually have a part in a movie are sex objects, there to gratify the masculine characters.  Women are people.  They are worthy of respect and love just as much as men are.  They do not exist for the gratification of men, and they do not exist in any less of a meaningful way than any man.  A woman's sexuality should not be exploited for monetary gain. 

Hollywood is motivated by money, like everything else, so if we want this sort of exploitation and objectification to stop, we need to choose the movies we see with some discretion. True, I watch movies that don't represent women well, but I balance that out by also supporting the ones that do. It's hard to escape the influence of a male dominated media, but we can at least become aware of the problem.