#946: Betty Miller

Betty Miller is behind the website Bibleresources.org (a front for Christ Unlimited Ministries), where she offers daily devotionals based on the Proverbs. One can perhaps guess where she stands on some current issues, and as so many people of her kind she is positively obsessed with sex. In Miller’s opinion pornography should for instance not be protected by the First Amendment because it is Satan’s speak, and Satan is not protected by the Constitution – pornography is a “perversion of free speech,” and speech Miller doesn’t fancy should of course not be protected by the First Amendment.

But Miller’s diagnosis of her perceived moral downfall of society goes deeper: it’s the fault of women not dressing properly. By failing to cover themselves properly, they are tempting men to commit immoral acts. So clearly the women are to blame. The answer to these woes? Pray, and read the material published by Focus on the Family. Tattoos are a sin as well, since tattoos have witchcraft roots (“Witchcraft involvement can,” for instance, “cause UFO manifestations”). And her views on masturbation are based on, well, not facts, at least.

Such views are staple fare for elderly religious fundamentalists, of course. Real lunacy is revealed e.g. when Miller starts talking about child psychology: “Some children are born under a curse and have demons that cause their erratic behavior,” says Miller, and she chastises parents for failing to recognize the true source of the child’s erratic behavior. Damned be those evil psychologists who says otherwise. Her solution is, as usual, prayer. Demons are behind school shootings as well – demons, and “evil rock music”. And computer games. And comic books. And, of course, the obvious one: teaching evolution.

In short, everything that is different from when Miller grew up. Today people are for instance practicing the black witchcraft of yoga, and “[y]oga is not a trifling jest if we consider that any misunderstanding in the practice of yoga can mean death or insanity,” and that if the breath is “prematurely exhausted, there is immediate danger of death for the yogi […] Blackouts, strange trance states, or insanity are listed from even ‘the slightest mistake …’ of practicing yoga.” Indeed.

But the main cause of the downfall of the Western World, and for school shootings, is of course the fact that schools can no longer force children to participate in prayer. It is always prayer. Prayer solves everything. And when it doesn’t, it just means that the person behind the prayer is still under the attack or influence of demons and consequently didn’t pray hard enough.

Diagnosis: Old, fundamentalist ranter. There is nothing in her rants that is less than typical – none of the examples given will probably shock anyone by their originality or unusualness. But that’s the point. Lunacy is a pretty mainstream affair, and Miller is definitely a loon. She seems also to carry a certain amount of influence.