About a month ago, Kate Donovan wrote a post making a good case that it’s time to ditch the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster thing, and I’m inclined to agree with her. Partly because it’s served its purpose, but mostly because it incorporates sexism and homophobia into its mythology. Specifically, she points out some passages in The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Bobby Henderson, which describe the rewards of the Pastafarian afterlife as including a stripper factory and a beer volcano:

We’d like to tell you all about our Heaven, which features a Stripper Factory and a giant Beer Volcano.

[….]

Q: If there’s a Beer Volcano and a Stripper Factory in Heaven, what’s FSM Hell like?

A: We’re not entirely certain, but we imagine it’s similar to FSM Heaven, only the beer is stale and the strippers have venereal diseases. Not unlike Las Vegas.

The strippers aren’t all women, of course, but straight men aren’t required to get rid of their homophobia in Pastafarian heaven:

Q: Are there male strippers in FSM Heaven for women?
A: Probably, but they are invisible to the non-homo guys.

Note two things in that passage: first, heterosexuality is the norm in Pastafarian Heaven. And second, homophobia is assumed to be the default; if straight men have to look upon the icky sexual desires of heterosexual women or gay men, it can’t be heaven. Bi, trans, and genderqueer people aren’t even anywhere in the equation. For someone like me, who’s perpetually curious about other people’s sexualities because it expands the way I see my own, it sounds like hell.

When I read those quotes, they sounded vaguely familiar, but they had fallen right out of my brain long ago. Like most religious believers, I just knew the basics and ignored the details. But, as the theists say, God (or the Devil) is in the details. [Read more…]