Have you seen the segment on "Hell Houses" on Current TV?

[bluestateguy]

The station has been airing it several times a day. It's about these "Hell houses" that fundie wacko churches put together around Halloween to scare people into becoming fundamentalist wacko "Christians".

Among the exhibits at the Hell House are a girl who had a botched abortion, a gay man dying of AIDS, a kid shooting himself at school and a girl who was slipped a roofie at a party.

Maybe they could add an exhibit showing Hillary Clinton being sworn in as President of the United States. :scared:

[catmother]

1. no, but i saw it years ago. n/t

[DemGirl7]

2. those "Hell Houses" are lame...

I think someone should make a real hell house showing the danger of Republicans and Fundie Churches to society.

[msongs]

3. where christians deliberately murder native americans using blankets

they know contain small pox so they can steal the indian lands?

or do you mean the one where the lutherans and catholics in germany send millions of jews to die in concentration camps?

or how about the enslavement of tens of millions of africans so some white people don't have to do their own dirty work?

there are soooooooooooooo many possibilities :-)

hell house, indeed. having it at a church is spot on.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[alfredo]

4. Worse yet,

the ones who try to kill you with green bean casserole, and potatoes au gratin.

[belle]

5. Was it the same as this documentary?

http://www.hellhousemovie.com/hellhouse/

[Eric J in MN]

8. It seems to be excerpts from that documentary,

about 5 minutes.

[jane_pippin]

9. That movie is nuts! Well worth seeing. n/t

[jayctravis]

12. It was enjoyable in the same way that WAITING FOR GUFFMAN is.

Watching the highschoolers audition for these parts is a riot. Personally I think it's horrifying that they would have a scene where they throw blood on the crotch and down the jeans of a teenage girl and wheel her on a stretcher, but I guess that's the type of horror they're into.

Funny how there's always someone there who can "make the rave authentic". At the end the patrons are supposed to choose which way they "go" afterwards, one choice is apparently a biblestudy sort of indoctrination into their church.

[jane_pippin]

18. It's funny but depressing.

Some of those people were so hurt by life, and there they are clinging to all of that to get through whatever bad thing happened to them. I felt bad for them, more than anything else.

[fishwax]

13. I think I saw part of that documentary at the local

video store ... looked pretty entertaining ...

[spooky3]

6. How about a room where the SC has just named * President for 4+ years?

[LostInAnomie]

7. Bill Maher, Micheal Moore, and a bunch of other liberal celebs...

... participated in a "Hell House" last year. They thought it was good for a laugh.

[belle]

10. If you watch the documentary, it's ultimately more sad than anything else

Well, and scary, considering how much influence these people have had over the government and the zeitgeist this past while. But even so: sad. horrible little dried-up dead-end town in Texas where "Hell House" is the closest thing they have to anything remotely festive. it's apparently like theatre and "Rocky Horror" and school dances and nightlife (any sort of nightlife) AND a kind of psychodrama *(see next paragraph) all rolled up into one...except, you know, with threats of hellfire and damnation and D.A.R.E. type preachers hard-selling you Jesus at the end. oh yeah, and a really unthinking sort of racism in addition to the blatant homophobia and sexism.

*One of the parents, a single father, seemed like a nice enough guy, a sad sack, though: he had two kids. One, the daughter, was thrilled because she'd been chosen to play "abortion girl" (sort of the equivalent of Juliet here I guess); the son had some sort of condition, epilepsy, maybe. anyway apparently his wife had run off with another man on him or something, and one of the scenes in the hell house was clearly based his stuff, an adultery scene where the cheating wife is killed by the outraged husband (I think; something like that); the *wife* ends up in hell, of course. apparently all with the guy's blessing (he worked backstage on the thing, so it's not like he didn't know). i guess it's sort of a release for them. but they can't let go of that awful Calvinist morality. "God shows His eternal love by essentially torturing anyone who does something He doesn't like...which mostly has to do with sex and dancing. Oh, and generally there's a punishment on earth (rape victim, AIDS patient), and *then* you burn in hell, unless you choke out repentance right before you croak. whatever.

[freeplessinseattle]

14. ok, so cheating is worse than murder?

whoa, these people are truly frightening!

[BiggJawn]

11. Around here its called "Final EXIT"

www.finalexit.com

"Radical Reality" But they throw in a DUI death car, too.

And the pocket protector nerd, just before he gets raped by a cheerleader, cries "Oh GAWD! WHY did I ever read that book 'Cosmos'????"

[NMMNG]

15. I could make a "Hell House"

I already have the actors and actresses in mind:

The man with paranoid schizophrenia and overwhelming anxiety who has been forever f*cked up because his charismatic Christian parents had him exorcised as a child when he began showing signs of mental illness.

My lesbian friend who lives so far in the closet that she barely admits to herself that she's gay because her rabidly Catholic parents and siblings have instilled in her that being gay is an abomination.

My friend who has attempted suicide numerous times because his ultra-religious parents brought him up in a household so repressive he grew up to have severe anxiety and depression.

[TheGunslinger]

16. Here's a few things they could add >>>>

* Fundamentalist preachers having sex with hookers

* Right-wing politicians engaging in homosexual sex

* Right-wing politicians engaging in sex and homosexual sex with minors

* Fundamentalist preachers engaging in child-sex rings

* Right-wing politicians anally raping their wives while their wives are asleep

[RebelOne]

17. Who was the boy who shot himself at school?

My friend's son shot himself to death at school several years ago. He was the victim of bullying.