I'm sorry, this is just dumb and hateful. I get and respect that your reading of your sacred texts may lead you to the understanding that homosexuality is sinful. My reading doesn't take me there, but I respect that you are where you are. And to you I would offer the following:
1) If you are against gay marriage, then don't marry (you may use the verb transitively or intransitively here) a gay person. It's that simple. While I happen to believe that this country was, indeed founded on Christian values, I also believe:
- those Christian values include both tolerance and pluralism; and
- the founders of this great nation, themselves having fled from religious oppression that attempted to impose uniform religious practices upon them, later saw fit to build into our Constitution a separation of spiritual/religious values and the workings of the State. The fact that this Constitution was drafted nearly 150 years after those first immigrants landed, yet the writers still saw fit to include this separation as its First Amendment is, I think, significant.
But my issues with this CAAP nonsense are a bit deeper:
2) On the CAAP website, I don't see any mention of educating kids, feeding the hungry, or sheltering the homeless. I don't see any response to the "My Brother's Keeper" initiative, and see nothing about gun control or racial profiling. How is gay marriage more important to an African American Pastor than any of those issues? And what about the whole concept of racial unity? Do y'all really think that black people in America (or ANY people of color in America) have arrived to the point where we can afford to be taking one another out? I remember reading this book that said that if your brother sins against you (not sure how advocating for the rights of gay people is a sin against you, CAAP, unless you're thinking with the mind of closeted gay people. But that's another conversation) -- this book I read said that if your brother sins against you you should go to him and tell him his fault. If he listens to you, cool; if not, then take a couple of people with you to tell him; if he still doesn't listen, take it to the church, and if he still doesn't listen, then let him go on his way. I don't see anywhere where it says to try to stop him from doing his job, or for humans to assume the Divine role of judgement. If you're thinking that attempting to get a million signatures and sending them to Congress is somehow equivalent to telling the church about your brother's sins, I would suggest that you might want to re-evaluate what god you serve.
As a matter of fact, that same book I read talks about how ugly going to court is (I'm going to extend the concept of going to court to this attempt to influence Congress to impeach Holder), and the fact that this sort of drama does more harm than good, providing fodder for more wrong and injustice. I get it that y'all don't think Holder is one of the Saints (in which case, btw, you shouldn't be arguing with him, but attempting to strengthen him in faith) -- I get it that you don't think he's one of you Saints. But surely you must not be unaware of the fact that the Christian community has divergent views on the matter of human sexuality?!? Do you really think this calling for impeachment is a way of doing no harm? This book I read has a lot of solutions for dealing with people with whom you have a disagreement. None of them include trying to get them fired, just as none of them include flaming them in your blog. So I get it that the easy accessibility of social media sometimes allows us to take shortcuts. But at the end of the day, what is it that you're trying to achieve? Have you thought this through? What's driving this?
I could go on and on about the Book and how it dictates people's behavior towards one another. I could give anecdotal evidence of how the most rabidly anti-gay people I've ever known were either knowingly or unknowingly closet cases (I don't say that lightly; I realize that some people are simply incapable of acknowledging their own homoerotic tendencies, and because of their conditioning or environment or whatever, they sublimate either those tendencies or their self-hatred because of those tendencies into an irrationally rabid homophobia). I could talk about how some people genuinely and sincerely believe that homosexuality is an abomination proscribed for Judeo-Christian believers, in the same way, in the same place, and for the same reasons that tattoos, pork, and shellfish are proscribed for Judeo-Christian believers. Some people adhere to all these laws; some not so much. That, too, is another discussion. What I get from the Book is that God still speaks, and that there is room at the Cross for every one of God's creations. But everyone doesn't get the same thing from the Book, so I'ma leave that alone for now.
My last thought on the matter is this:
3) The CAAP site lists a link to something called "Why the Conservative Mind Matters." Isn't "conservative mind" an oxymoron?
ttfn...
