Remember that sweet boy who dressed up as Daphne for Halloween? There's more to the story. She's been accused of bearing false witness, promoting gayness and was basically given an ultimatum to apologize or not come back to church.

So stuck are these "Christians" on this one thing that they can vilify that they are blind to actually doing anything useful. Spirituality is so important (to me, anyway... though my spirituality doesn't come through religion). However, I feel bad for those who would receive a sense of spirituality and belonging through religion, but are shunned by the "Church." Gays and the Church don't need to be enemies. I place all the blame for this problem on the Church.

For some reason it brings to mind a story from Christoper Hitchen's "God is not Great," which essentially argues that religion is irrelevant to morality. He was asked the following question:

"I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on. Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching. Now -- would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting?"

Hitchens replied that the answer was "less safe" and as a gay man I would agree. This was not the answer that the questioner was looking for...
The person who posed the question wrote a response to this here, claiming that Hitchens had misrepresented the question and "prayer meeting" was actually "Bible Study," so Hitchens was responding incorrectly to an incorrect question.

What's funny for me is that if I knew they were coming out of "Bible Study" I would DEFINITELY feel less safe.

Sorry but if you have tunnel vision thinking that the only "good" way is the Church's way, and the Church is an infallible force of "good" in this world, and that prayer always leads to "better" people, then you deserve to be a brain-dead sheep.

But in this case, the pastor was wanting Boo's mom to apologize - not to the Church, but specifically to the four bitch mom parishioners who she'd scolded for bullying her child. So it seems more like typical Small Town of Small Minds potatoes, more than particularly churchy.

Well he was bullying her to apologize because she had, in the eyes of the pastor/church/God/Jeebus broken one of the ten commandments. I see that as really churchy.

Better that she find out what kind of people they really are I say. Put on a pretty face to (most of) the world, but when it comes down to it, they are ugly.

That story seems familiar somehow.... ;)

It's like deja vu! ;)

All over again!