More Info on Doug Wilson, Pedophile Enabler

[Howl]

We have Prime, but I greatly fear being slimed reading his unctuous drivel. 

Also, the Amazon intro refers to Wilson as an "award winning pastor" but only specifies an award for "Best Fiction" so I think it's up to us to made a list. 

I'm thinking that Christian fiction is a lot like Christian popular music.  We did a long drive to Utah and back and scanning the FM stations, I could tell within 3 seconds if it was a Christian popular music station, because it all sounds the same. 

Happily, NPR turns up in the most unlikely places, as do some great popular music stations. 

Speaking of Gawd-ordained sexual binary, how about that Pope Francis stepping outside the box, eh, and approving civil unions for LGBT+!  

[Hane]

I’m thinking of doing a chapter-by-chapter summary and commentary on Dougie’s smarmy brick of sludge, the way I did on Anna Duggar’s sister-in-law’s aunt’s deathless tome, “Serena’s Serenity.”

Edited October 23, 2020 by Hane

[hoipolloi]

6 hours ago, Hane said:

I’m thinking of doing a chapter-by-chapter summary and commentary on Dougie’s smarmy brick of sludge, the way I did on Anna Duggar’s sister-in-law’s aunt’s deathless tome, “Serena’s Serenity.”

Props and beaucoup  to you, if you do. 

TYIA!

[Hane]

11 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Props and beaucoup  to you, if you do. 

TYIA!

¡Muchas thankyous! I think I’ll get started tonight!

[Hane]

Not ready to post my chapter-by-chapter here yet, but if you’re interested in my review, go to  Amazon.com under “Ride, Sally, Ride” and look for the one-star review titled “A smug political screed.”

[Howl]

thank you!  There are a few more one-star comments than from the first time I read the reviews.  Every one-star review will dissuade more people from actually paying money for this drivel. 

Pretty sure the five-star reviews are from Wilson humpers who are impressed by his word-smithy erudite way with words.

I do have to occasionally take a minute or two to remember the sheer breadth of this man's evil, Machiavellian doings. 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Howl

[fundiewatch]

I’m here for this, @Hane! Serena’s Serenity was a lark. 

[hoipolloi]

16 hours ago, Hane said:

Not ready to post my chapter-by-chapter here yet, but if you’re interested in my review, go to  Amazon.com under “Ride, Sally, Ride” and look for the one-star review titled “A smug political screed.”

Thank you for taking one for the team.

Predictably, the vast majority of "reviewers" are Doug's leg humpers.

[Hane]

Hi, friends!  I'm summarizing Doug Wilson's latest pile of dreck so you don't have to. This precis is long, because the freaking book is. It took considerable labor to chip through the author's overblown verbosity to winnow out the point.

Ride, Sally, Ride (Or Sex Rules):  Prefatory Matters

I used the stuffy term “prefatory matters” here to set the stage for Doug the Pedo-Enabler’s grandiose style. He’s one of those guys who’s oh, so proud of his wit and of his assumption that he’s oh, so much smarter than anyone who opposes him philosophically, politically, or theologically:  guys like Dennis Miller or Bill Maher—cut from the same cloth despite their differences in worldview.

Epigraph (his term):

“A comedy of manners in a world without any manners, that world being a sexual dystopia in the very near future.” Doug also press-gangs the lyrics of “Mustang Sally” (“Ride, Sally, Ride”) into the story, as a fun little bit of slut-shaming.

Note:

“All of the characters are fictional….Any resemblance to any real people, living or dead, is their own darn fault.” OK, then.

Explanation, As One Is Clearly Needed (because we’re all WAY less brilliant than you, Dougie):

According to Dougie, “sex rules” (including customs and etiquette) exist as a necessary outgrowth of sexual binary “realities,” which were established by God. He quotes Horace in the original Latin, in order to impress us, and thoughtfully includes the translation “You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she will keep coming back in.”

An Overture to the Whole Affair:

Dougie introduces Our Hero, Asahel “Ace” Hardwick, who will serve as the catalyst that sparked “the crack-up of the United States.” (Asahel means “made by God,” and was one of David’s generals in the Old Testament. Dougie doesn’t tell us this, because he luh-HOVES to show off his Biblical knowledge and make people feel ignorant for not having his level of scholarship. Also, he desperately needed a male name that could be shortened to “Ace.”) He throws in a chunk of irrelevant theological history here.

Chapter One: A Phinehas Moment (Phinehas--as Doug doesn't bother to tell us, either because he assumes we know or because he wants to show off his knowledge of Biblical minutiae--is an Israelite who executed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman for committing the sin of intermarrying.

Setting the Stage

It’s 2024.  The swanky Cherry Creek neighborhood of Denver is compared with the downtown area, which has rapidly gone to hell since the legalization of marijuana. (Note:  I have never been in Colorado.  I have no idea what it’s like living there, or what negative changes may have transpired as a result of legalizing weed. If any of you can clue me in, thanks in advance.  I am not taking Dougie’s word for ANYTHING.) Half the “ministries,” as the result of the “Troubles of ’24,” have fled the state to places where they would “be able to remain legal, and where their newsletters would not be immediately prosecuted for hate speech.” The remaining ministries kowtow to the “never-ending directives from the Colorado Human Rights Commission,” tripling their legal budgets to cover themselves.

Benson Hardwick is an elder in a remaining Presbyterian church that still had the remains of evangelicalism and orthodoxy about it. He is stereotypically masculine, and is being presented as something of a non-confrontational, middle-of-the-road stuffed shirt, with a long-suffering wife and a twenty-year son named Ace, who is a college student. Ace is a cheerful sort with a “quick mind,” blond, muscular, and athletic, with an “industrious, diligent” look. (No subtlety there!) He works on getting information from “a dark website that specialized in getting nineteenth theology into the heavily censored blue states.” Here it begins: Yes, FJers—we of the Blue States are hard at work censoring everything that isn’t distinctly left of center. The funny thing about this book is that Dougie et al are bound and determined to smack down anything they don’t agree with by means of their “logic” and “Biblical reasoning.” They presuppose they’re always right, so there’s the fault that lies in this entire novel.

In another gated community, not as posh as Cherry Creek, lives Jon Hunt, a semi-retired lawyer who reads theology and does pro bono work for the “now exiled Christian Legal Defense.” He converted to Presbyterian Christianity because his wife left him for another woman. He lives with his daughter Stephanie, a Libertarian college student who isn’t a Christian but who is thinking about it. She is on her way home from a coffee date with a guy named Lionel, who attends Benson Hardwick’s church. Lionel will drop out of the story and return later.

Everyone stop and take a hit of your favorite anti-nausea remedy, because here comes that Male Gaze description we all love seeing so much: “Stephanie had jet black hair, cut in a page boy style, and a spray of freckles across her nose. She was willowy without being skinny, and she managed to be well-proportioned without being in any way a hazard or public nuisance. She was a pretty girl, but there are different kinds of pretty girls in this world of ours. Some women are just plain gorgeous, and they don’t really know how to tur it off, but Stephanie was not like that. She was entirely secure without any make-up, as was routinely described as ‘that pretty girl.’ But whenever she decided to put on the Ritz, the effect was to summon up an oceanic goddess of beauty de profundis. And if she smiled at anything male while done up like that, he would probably be in the ICU for at least a couple of days.”

She enters the house and kisses her father, who addresses her as “crazy legs.” (Ick.) She ridicules Lionel for having mispronounced “Pentateuch.”

Some historical background for this story: There are 51 states, Puerto Rico having been admitted in 2022. The “infamous” Roe v. Wade decision was overturned in 2023 (with Handmaid Coney Barrett just sworn in, I’m terrified this may happen.)  As a result, states started aligning themselves according to those sympathizing with reproductive freedom and marriage equality, “with blue states opening themselves to more and more novel configurations of marriage.” Amusingly, Dougie refers to the conservative red states as “the free states,” which I found confusing as I read the book. People are moving in droves to states that better reflect their values. California is working toward seceding. “The red states got a lot redder, and the blue states got a lot poorer.” (Dougie is underestimating the amount of revenue generated by places like California and New York.) The heartland states are held together by three groups: free-market guys wanting to sell oil and other commodities to the world, social conservatives (hostile to “abortion, pot, and porn”), and a third group encompassing both.

The Meeting

A new neighbor moves in across the street from the Hardwicks. Benson asks his wife to make a platter of cookies to take over. (Insert stabbing sounds here.) Ace and Benson go over to help Steve Sasani, the new neighbor, move his packing crates into his house. (In my experience, the moving guys do this, but who am I.) In the house, Steve introduces his wife, Sally—a life-sized late-model sex android. “She was decked out like a suburban housewife, and…staring vacantly, straight ahead. Her lips had that come-hither pout, that sexy look, like she had just been hit in the mouth with a brick.” Steve talks to Sally as if she’s human. There’s a lot of commentary about how creepy she is, but looks like the kind of woman who would be considered too attractive for Steve if she were real.

They or He?

Benson decides to invite Steve and Sally over to dinner. Ace is appalled. Benson talks about being tolerant to the choices they are making; Ace objects to the pronoun “they,” as Steve is a human being and Sally isn’t. Benson says “they need Jesus.” Ace says Steve does. Roberta, his mother, says nothing but it’s insinuated that she agrees with Ace but thinks Benson is nuts. Ace says this isn’t a theological issue but a sanity one.

Really Listening

The dinner occurs, with Steve continuing to play-act with Sally. Ace gets fed up and leaves the table to do homework. After Steve and Sally leave, Benson goes to Ace’s room to speak with him. He’s worried that Ace’s interests in theology are getting the way of a practical love and concern. Ace is worried that, if Steve becomes a Christian, he might want Pastor Rodriguez (see? A Spanish name, to prove that Dougie isn’t a racist!) to baptize Sally—and that the pastor might do it.

The Crossroads

Two days later, when Benson and Roberta are out at Bible study, Steve comes over and asks Ace to come over and look in on Sally while he goes on an errand, because she feels lonely and frightened in the new city. “Asahel, I know I can depend on you. What would be the right thing to do?” Ace responds, “You sure you want me to do the right thing?” and Steve says yes. This ridiculous request sets up the ridiculous plot line of the story.

Ace finds Sally, blindfolded and topless, propped up on the bed in the master bedroom. He goes home, gets an old “Christian Youth Jubilee” tee shirt, puts it on Sally, and loads it into his car. He drives her to the recycling center where he works and dumps her into a compactor, where she says, “Uhhh. Do it again. Uhhh. Harder, harder” and “Ride me, ride me.” He says, Okay—ride, Sally, ride” and flips the switch.  Because someone born in 2004 would know the lyrics of “Mustang Sally.”

The Right Thing

Ace goes home. A few minutes after his parents return, Steve shows up and accuses Ace of kidnapping Sally. Ace says “You asked me to look in on Sally and do the right thing. So I did. I think that’s all I need to say.” The cops arrive. Ace welcomes them to search the house, but makes sure the cops know that Sally isn’t Steve’s wife, but a sex doll. Roberta says, “You gentlemen need to ask Mr. Sasani why Sally couldn’t call herself, if she were in some kind of trouble.” Because real live people who have been kidnapped are always free to call for help.

Benson takes Ace aside and asks him if would have been the kind of brother who would have destroyed a sister’s dolls. Ace replies, “It would have to be a brother, not a sister. And if he had been having sex with his doll, I would not have needed to smash it. YOU would have.”

When Ace rejoins the cops, he sees Steve sitting on the large box he had picked up during his errand, weeping inconsolably. The box is labeled “Veronica the Nurse.”  

Edited October 28, 2020 by Coconut Flan

[Howl]

How many more chapters to go? Is that all one chapter with subheadings, or multiple chapters? It's OK to take a break. 

[Hane]

24 minutes ago, Howl said:

How many more chapters to go? Is that all one chapter with subheadings, or multiple chapters? It's OK to take a break. 

So far, this is one chapter with subheadings. I’m 9% through, and there are 13 more chapters. *stretches, flexes muscles, takes deep breath*

[forgetmenow]

I don't think I've ever sighed or rolled my eyes more.

His disgust at sex dolls is so ironic, given that he dehumanizes women to the point that that's all we are to him.  To be planted and colonized (his words) or to be handed over to a serial rapist to try to subvert his desire for small children.  What is his fear of sex becoming an "egalitarian pleasure party" but a preference for sex with a non human?

Thank you for the recap.  He truly is a foul, disgusting man.

[hoipolloi]

6 hours ago, Hane said:

Ace is a cheerful sort with a “quick mind,” blond, muscular, and athletic, with an “industrious, diligent” look.

OMG - it's a self-portrait of Doug! I recognized him immediately. 

Seriously, @Hane, you deserve something major for subjecting yourself to this.

His obsession with sex + control of women is revolting. No wonder Doug Wilson befriends and protects pedophiles. You have to wonder what else has gone on in that cult over the years.  

 

[Howl]

SRSLY, Wilson is terrified of a female sex doll/robot/android asking "That's all you've got?"

Also noting that Wilson has let himself go almost as much as Trump.  Not a great physical specimen, yet he constantly comments on women about their looks. 

[hollyandivy]

There is not enough wine on this earth to get me to read this book!

 

Thank you for doing this, I admire your guts!
 

[CTRLZero]

Imagine how much time pedophile enabler Doug Wilson spent going over how to describe and then treat the sex-bot.  He must go to some pretty dark places in his mind.  Is it a coincidence that the neighbor is named Steve (i.e., tribute to actual enabled pedophile Steven Sitler)? 

Thanks for doing this, @Hane .

[Katzchen24]

 “She was decked out like a suburban housewife, and…staring vacantly, straight ahead. Her lips had that come-hither pout, that sexy look, like she had just been hit in the mouth with a brick.” 

So....... he finds domestic abuse sexy?

I finally got around to reading some of the Doug Wilson/Steven Sittler threads and they are horrifying. But I do understand why he would write a description like this and think it's OK.

[Cults-r-us]

Hane, i'm so glad you made this topic! Who are these fools who gibe this book a 5-star review?

[smittykins]

18 hours ago, hollyandivy said:

There is not enough wine on this earth to get me to read this book!

 

Thank you for doing this, I admire your guts!
 

Agreed...and I don’t even drink.

Thanks for taking one for the team, @Hane. 

[Ozlsn]

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, Hane said:

Also, he desperately needed a male name that could be shortened to “Ace.”)

And my mental image went straight to Ace Rimmer, so I'll be assuming he looks like this from now on. 

Spoiler

Smoke me a kipper, Skipper...

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, Hane said:

where their newsletters would not be immediately prosecuted for hate speech.

If they'd stop writing hate speech they'd probably stop being prosecuted... too easy?

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, Hane said:

He works on getting information from “a dark website that specialized in getting nineteenth theology into the heavily censored blue states.”

"Nineteenth theology"? I feel like I have missed an important piece of information.

Also... if he works on this, is this a thing he gets paid for, or just a Sooper Sekrit Spy thing?

Also also... are we sure he's not just using it to sell drugs to the red states?

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, Hane said:

They presuppose they’re always right, so there’s the fault that lies in this entire novel.

A fault. I suspect there are more.

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, Hane said:

He converted to Presbyterian Christianity because his wife left him for another woman

From what? Do they tell us? Presumably atheist but for all we know he could have been a devout Buddhist. Also to Presbyterian Christanity, really? That is one of the more middle-of-the road denominations here, is that also the case? 

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, Hane said:

Everyone stop and take a hit of your favorite anti-nausea remedy, because here comes that Male Gaze description we all love seeing so much

Geez you weren't kidding. I take it this book is aimed at middle aged men?

On 10/28/2020 at 1:00 PM, Hane said:

The heartland states are held together by three groups: free-market guys wanting to sell oil and other commodities to the world, social conservatives (hostile to “abortion, pot, and porn”), and a third group encompassing both.

I think the first group have underestimated how much the world is moving away from them on that.

Also, just out of pure aimless curiosity, do we get a demographic breakdown of blue/red at all?

What if you don't want to sell oil but are dubious about porn - are there fringe areas? 

I am over thinking this world building, but it is making me laugh at least.

And... that got disturbing fast. Even faster than I was expecting actually.

Edited October 31, 2020 by Ozlsn

[Howl]

8 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

"Nineteenth theology"? I feel like I have missed an important piece of information.

Probably should be Nineteenth [century] theology.  This is what happens when you use an in-house editor (Canon Press) for your shitty novel. 

8 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

That is one of the more middle-of-the road denominations here, is that also the case? 

I was raised Presbyterian.  It was def middle-of-the-road -- IIRC, my mom was an elder and this was in the 1960s.  Our pastors were truly kind and decent people. 

There are types of Presbyterianism that are extremely conservative. There have been schisms over LGBTQ and ordaining women ministers.  There's an Evangelical Presbyterian Church and a Reformed Presbyterian church. 

Anyway, as far as Wilson's concerned, it's CALVIN! LAPHROAIG! MISOGYNY! 

Edited October 31, 2020 by Howl

[CTRLZero]

Wilson calls this a "Masterwork."  ?  I'm still looking for evidence of mastery of anything except misogyny and bloviating -- he does seem to have a knack for that. 

[Hane]

@CTRLZero, I was sarcastically calling this lump of dreck a “masterwork,” Dougie wasn’t, but I’m sure he thinks it’s one.

I meant to type “nineteenth *century* theology.” The error was mine, not Dougie’s. Ace’s study of this theology is his hobby, not his job—he’s a 20-year-old college student who works part time at a recycling center.

More to come later. This summary is harder work than the “Serena’s Serenity” one!

Edited October 31, 2020 by Hane

[Marmion]

9 hours ago, Howl said:

There are types of Presbyterianism that are extremely conservative. There have been schisms over LGBTQ and ordaining women ministers.  There's an Evangelical Presbyterian Church and a Reformed Presbyterian church.

And in addition , as far as fundamentalist Presbyterianism goes , in the United States , there is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church , and the Presbyterian Church in America .  { https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Presbyterian_Church  ,  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_Church_in_America }

[zandria]

The OPC mentioned by Marmion is the Serven Clan's denomination, by the way.