Oh, Ted, Ted, Ted...
posted by Law Fairy @ 9:18 AM
5 comments
Friday, November 03, 2006
About Me
- Name: Law Fairy
- Location: Los Angeles, California, United States
Either taking over the world a little bit more every day, or slowly losing myself to my happy delusions. Either way, I win.
5 Comments:
It might be a sick pleasure, but I always relish the instances when it is discovered that some uber-religious, son-of-God's-teachings man is found with another man's penis in his mouth. So to speak, of course. I take personal joy in their hypocrisy, and the subsequent revealing of it.
What's interesting is that he'll apparently admit to committing a crime (buying meth) rather than admit to having had homosexual relations. From a legal standpoint, the latter is *way* less damaging. I guess that's what troubles me about many in the Evangelical church (of which I used to be an active member). I think many priorities are skewed. Rather than focusing on God's will in their own lives and God's ministry of salvation on earth, they're caught up about who people have sex with. It's one thing to believe that homosexuality is a sin and to attempt to avoid it in your own life and counsel others to avoid it. It's completely another to turn it into a *political issue* as the church has done. Why isn't adultery a political issue? Why isn't divorce/remarriage a political issue? Why isn't rape a political issue? The church is so obsessed with homosexuality that a pastor thinks it's less damaging to admit to a serious criminal offense than to admit he's had sex with a man? I just think it's so skewed.
A note -- where I say "counsel others to avoid it" I don't mean Bible-thumping from the pulpit. I should have added "where appropriate." If you're in a position of authority in a church and a parishioner comes to you for guidance, I think it's absolutely appropriate to give whatever guidance you feel is moral (which, it should be noted, is the church's approach to the other issues I list). Why they make homosexuality into a federal case (literally, in Texas) is bewildering at best.
That is one creepy home town, all things considered. A evangelical mecca. Did you see Jesus Camp?
The hypocrisy is simply fantastic. Maybe Freud was right insofar as he identified religosity with repression.
The Jewniversity of Chicago must have been quite a different place for you, lawfairy.
lol, lou. Different, sure, but not as different as, say, Berkeley would have been. Don't forget that the UofC was (IIRC) the Federalists' birthing ground.
Also, as a minor note, evangelical conservatives are generally Jew-friendly, as long as we're talking conservative Jews. Don't forget that people like Laura Schlesinger are beloved of the religious right. Evangelical churches, to their credit, usually don't waste time with anti-Semitism. The evangelical church tends to view Jews as religious comrades who are *thisclose* to recognizing Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Although this is vaguely insulting, remember that evangelicals view *everyone* as lost -- they see Jews as hitting closer to the mark than most. Interestingly, conservative evangelicals are huge in using the Holocaust to make a political point (which you could certainly label cynical, but bear in mind this puts them in stark contrast with folks like Mel Gibson, who come from Holocaust-denier stock).
I haven't seen Jesus Camp, but I'm dying to. I've actually been to one of those camps... it would be quite an experience to view it through my (very much changed) eyes now.
C/S is something of an evangelical mecca... with places like New Life and Focus on the Family within blocks of each other, it's no wonder they have such a stronghold on the city. An interesting tidbit is that the city's founder gave out plots of land for free to churches while the city was still being developed. I'm sure this contributes to its conservative character as well (as does the strong military presence... USAFA, Peterson, Ft. Carson, NORAD).
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