Maine topless coffee shop is arson victim, Justice must be swift and merciless

From the Boston Globe:

A topless coffee shop that opened in [Vassalboro] Maine four months ago amid national notoriety was destroyed by arson early yesterday, the state fire marshal's office ruled.

Evidence found among the rubble at the Grand View Coffee Shop, a former motel just north of Augusta, indicated that the 1 a.m. blaze had been set shortly after its owner appeared before the Vassalboro Planning Board to discuss extending the shop's hours and allowing topless waitresses to dance around the restaurant.

A New England mainstay for nearly four months, the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop has become the latest high-profile victim of America's morality Gestapo. While the details are still fuzzy, we pretty much know the owner didn’t set the fire to collect the insurance money because unfortunately he had no insurance. We also pretty much know that this wasn’t the act of some bored-to-shit Maine teenagers because while vandalism may be an effective remedy for ennui, in this case the cure would be worse than the disease. What All-American mischievous kids are going to burn down a topless coffee shop? No, this heinous act was almost certainly perpetrated by a sexually repressed “adult” who is uncomfortable with his or her own body. Indeed, the subject of sexuality frequently brings out the irrational in many, and if you look deep enough you will see that an unabated jealousy often feeds the neurosis.

As such, this was not just a violent act against a lone business. It was an attack on an idea—the idea that there is nothing about topless women that should prevent them from serving quality coffee and donuts. It is frightening to know that there are people who are so disturbed by the thought of the human body that they would seek to destroy those who do not share their culturally retarded viewpoint. In yesterday’s post I alluded to the puritanical nature of the American attitude toward sex, and even in liberal New England that nature has manifested itself all too clearly.

Although officials are still gathering evidence, I think it’s safe to assume that the arsonist is most likely a practitioner of Christianity, although the other major religions are just as capable of producing such nuts. Some may think it premature to blame a member of the faithful for this arson, but I say it’s as close to a mortal lock as you can get. Only the perverse attitude of a Christian (or an adherent of some other major faith) toward human sexuality can explain what happened in Vassalboro yesterday. It does not matter if the troglodyte who set the fire was specifically trying to score one for God and Decency or not; for in any case, he or she is a product of a backward culture shaped by the twisted tenets of the Christian religion.

I am not saying that America should become a giant nudist colony. Indeed, this country’s population is far too obese and in many cases too ugly to attempt such a brave enterprise. But to view the human body as something that is inherently pornographic, as this country does, is to surrender to the Biblical dogma that one must be ashamed of the body. The allegory of the Fall of Man is instructive on this point. Only after Adam and Even eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil do they realize they are nude. And what do they do then? They fashion some fig leaves into crotch guards and hide from the malevolent Yahweh when he calls out to them:

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

(Gen. 3: 9-12)

Because they have ingested the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve now “know” that nudity is an evil. And why is it an evil? Genesis doesn’t say. The delusional author of this text probably just assumed we would know because he figured that we’d share his dementia and regard nudity as bad. I'm sorry, but this stinks to high heaven with the stench of man’s prejudices and irrationalities, and so does the rest of the Good Book.

While many Americans admit that the Bible is not to be taken literally, far too many still regard this horrific tome as being ethically valuable in a metaphoric sense. I could not disagree more. Front to back, the Bible is one of the craziest, most irrational, genocidal, and dangerous books ever written—so much so that it took many writers over hundreds of years to cook up this nightmarish volume which has been responsible for more deaths than we could possibly count.

And so, it does not surprise me in the least that in a culture where the Bible is blindly revered, a coffee shop whose waitresses (and waiters) are nude only from the waist up gets burned to the ground. Usually it is prepubescent children who cannot maturely handle matters concerning sexuality, but unfortunately sexuality is also a difficult subject for those who get their morals from 2,000 year-old fairy tales written by total ignoramuses.

-Max