...Outrage at a small-town church! Somebody posted a video on YouTube, showing a very young boy singing in the church about how "..ain't no homo gonna get into heaven..." to applause from parishioners and next thing y'know, Sunday dawns all crawling with protesters. And some counterprotesting and counter-counter protesting (one guy who wants both sides to go away!).
In fact, the only people who were missing were the congregation. And the preacher. They went elsewhere. Which is one way to deal with an irreconcilable difference.
All this over a five-year-old's opinion of who's got a ticket to an unprovable afterlife? Whew! I guess that means both religious conservatives and LGBT people have managed to fix all the serious issues!
...Um, right?
Oh.
Motes, logs, eyes, all that sort of thing. Imagine if they'd'a all put the effort into feeding the hungry instead of worrying what'll happen to 'em after they're dead!
(Homework assignment: Pohl and Kornbluth's "The World Of Myrion Flowers." Off-topic? Are you sure?)
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* I will note that PR flacks have managed to push an actual, you know, riot, into the background and renamed it Pride Day. Retconning: every group does it.
Well, you must admit, the gummint has taken over so many of the church's functions in these latter days of the welfare state that it gives churches a lot of spare time to concoct this kind of idiocy.
ReplyDeleteIdle hands are the Devil's playground, as it were.
The thing that chaps my ass most about it isn't that they're teaching the child to hate teh gay, because it's still technically a free country and churches can preach against gays or blacks or Jews or whitey or women or Catholics or Mormons or whoever, but that they're raising the kid to be a crude boor.
ReplyDelete"Ain't no homos gonna make it into heaven"? Seriously? Say, rather, "No homosexuals will be allowed into heaven."
You stay classy, Greensburg!
Took me a while to figure out the Stonewall reference.
ReplyDeleteThe PR wing of the Gay Pride world has definitely removed those events from the regular part of the cultural consciousness.
About the kid, the church, and the boors...golly, can't they learn to ask the polite question of whether the church actually believes that certain sins are unforgivable? (Jesus did teach about unforgiveable sin, but it's not the one that the kid sang about...)
At least, that's where I'd begin. I must be one of those crazy people who expects a church to live up to its own standards. (Hey, it's easier to argue that than to argue that they should change their standards.)
Haven't seen the figures on how many LGBT* food banks or missions helping the poor that exist, but I am confident they've got a ways to go to catch up with churches in that regard.
ReplyDelete*I am someday going to design a fake 70's era Soviet armored vehicle to go along with that mouthful.
Mike James
Just be glad the kid wasn't named Scudder.
ReplyDeleteYes, because civil rights movements are exactly like churches and should be compared as such*.
ReplyDeleteMy local bank is great with their checking and savings programs and are great about mortgages and loans, but they never have scheduled services on moral lessons. I think I'm pissed.
*The LGTB movement HAS produced a lot of halfway house shelters for queer teens kicked out of their homes, low-cost or free counseling or medical services, and domestic violence shelters for people who don't fit the "battered wife" mold... but this is stuff actually in line with their reason for existence.
It just bugs me end to end -- first off, on the believer side smug assurances of who *ain't* a-gettin' in does damn-all to increase the numbers of those who do; and second, on the gay-rights side they're not going to change church doctrine by picketing.
ReplyDeleteI suppose they are keeping one another out of worse trouble, and the First Amendment from getting rusty. There's something to be said for that.