Does Tony Ortega Bad-Mouth Your Religion?

Tony Ortega, the rabid, bigoted antireligionist, isn’t particular about which religion he bashes. He’s apparently never met any religion he doesn’t hate. He ridicules and scorns any person of belief.

When Ortega worked at the New Times alt newspaper The Pitch in Kansas City, he “humorously” wrote, “Religious people actually hate each other’s guts. Too many of them figure they have all the mysteries of the universe solved, and anyone who disagrees is going straight to hell.

“In the meantime, they figure that salvation is a matter of attracting as many tithe-making suckers into their big tent before the end times.”

Ortega is an equal opportunity bigot. Besides denigrating Scientology because of the Church’s vocal protest against the Backpage.com sex ad website Ortega staunchly promoted, he has also published his disdain for Catholics, Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists and other Christian denominations, and Buddhism and Islam. He uses his acid, condescending, mean-spirited “humor” to attack them all.

He has called Latter-day Saints “latter-day dolts,” and blasts Christianity as a “kookocracy” and “tithe-making suckers” who pray to a God he calls a “conniving, underhanded and petty biatch” and “small-minded wanker.”

In fact, just about the only person whose beliefs don’t come under attack from Tony Ortega is the “Great God Tony,” who portrays himself as too smart to accept any religious belief, despite the wisdom of untold billions of believers of various religions in the world.

As the Covid pandemic raged across the world, killing over a million Americans, Ortega wrote, “Is the pandemic right out of the Bible?” “If the world really is ending, we thought it was time to prepare properly for Armageddon. By, you know, reading the damn thing.

“The Bible, that is.”

“This book has become awfully silly in a very short amount of time, hasn’t it?”

He wrote a series of 13 articles maligning the Bible—the holy book of tens of millions of people—in the guise of “satire.”

He sneeringly calls God “the Big Guy’” and “What a chotch this guy is!”

Ortega hasn’t held down a steady job for more than a decade since he was fired as editor of The Village Voice. He managed to hook up with a wife just as antireligious, just as mocking, just as hateful as he is—Arielle Silverstein, a United Nations employee with her own well-documented antireligious postings and apparent willingness to financially support Ortega’s ranting.

Silverstein, who calls herself a “Jewish atheist,” reviled Hispanic preachers as “wackos” and “crazy,” ultra-Orthodox Jews as “cults,” and Christians as “suckers!”

“Muslims appear to be particularly thin-skinned” she wrote, and “Your Ayatollahs are crazed lunatics.”

She sponsored a “Draw Mohammed Day” in 2011, knowing that Muslims would find it utterly blasphemous: “It makes me mad that the Muslim world reacts so violently to any stick figure named Mohamed [sic].”

She even posted a photo of a pug’s hindquarters which she said “looks like Jesus.”

She stated she likes “nothing more than explaining to religious people why I dislike God.”

A lovely couple.

Ortega and the Center for Inquiry West, a group of antireligious “skeptics,” have religious hatred in common. Introducing Ortega at an event in Los Angeles, the emcee bragged “We’ve hit Jews, the Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Satanists, Buddhists—we hit everybody.”

So hop on board the hate train with Tony Ortega and Arielle Silverstein, if you want to take a trip to misery, loneliness, hatred and despair.