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To the topic that religion bears some responsibility for how it influences its adherents comes this situation where a woman had a string of lights on her porch in a rainbow configuration and some "neighbor" left this cowardly anonymous note for her after previously threatening to burn the house down:
Quote:
Dear resident of 4900 Kenwood Avenue:
Your yard is becoming relenlessly gay! Myself and others in the neighborhood ask that you tone it down. This is a Christian area and there are Children. Keep it up and I will be forced to call the Police on you! Your kind need to have some respect for GOD.
A Concerned Homeowner
The irony is that the woman in question may well not even be LGBTQ or had some sort of LGBTQ activism in mind. She's a mother of 4 in Baltimore who likes rainbows. To her credit she did a kickstarter campaign to make her yard even more "relentlessly gay" and got several times the funding target and is currently contracting out painters, etc.
Now this screed is clearly the action of an individual, but an individual who is part of a church who has been inculcated with certain aversions, fears, and bigotries; or at the very least a person who already had these aversions, fears and bigotries, whom the church has failed to remake into a better person with an alleged "new nature in Christ".
This general mindset is so prevalent in the South of the US as to be almost a given, to the extent my daughter is in the process of escaping that region as she finds it oppressive and, increasingly, dangerous to live there with any freedom of expression at all. These kinds of aggressive actions exist there, not just in neighborhoods but in workplaces and everyday interactions in the public square.
What could the SBC and others dominant in that region reasonably do to take a stand against this fascistic acting out? I would expect, given such organization's promotion of agape love and grace, to see campaigns against hatred, suspicion, otherizing and coercion, and explaining that treating people you differ with as fellow human beings deserving of ordinary respect and kindness, is entirely compatible with their views about what is or isn't "sinful". I would expect "church discipline" to reign in someone like this letter writer.
Perhaps such efforts exist, and I'm not aware of it?
To the topic that religion bears some responsibility for how it influences its adherents comes this situation where a woman had a string of lights on her porch in a rainbow configuration and some "neighbor" left this cowardly anonymous note for her after previously threatening to burn the house down:
The irony is that the woman in question may well not even be LGBTQ or had some sort of LGBTQ activism in mind. She's a mother of 4 in Baltimore who likes rainbows. To her credit she did a kickstarter campaign to make her yard even more "relentlessly gay" and got several times the funding target and is currently contracting out painters, etc.
Now this screed is clearly the action of an individual, but an individual who is part of a church who has been inculcated with certain aversions, fears, and bigotries; or at the very least a person who already had these aversions, fears and bigotries, whom the church has failed to remake into a better person with an alleged "new nature in Christ".
This general mindset is so prevalent in the South of the US as to be almost a given, to the extent my daughter is in the process of escaping that region as she finds it oppressive and, increasingly, dangerous to live there with any freedom of expression at all. These kinds of aggressive actions exist there, not just in neighborhoods but in workplaces and everyday interactions in the public square.
What could the SBC and others dominant in that region reasonably do to take a stand against this fascistic acting out? I would expect, given such organization's promotion of agape love and grace, to see campaigns against hatred, suspicion, otherizing and coercion, and explaining that treating people you differ with as fellow human beings deserving of ordinary respect and kindness, is entirely compatible with their views about what is or isn't "sinful". I would expect "church discipline" to reign in someone like this letter writer.
Perhaps such efforts exist, and I'm not aware of it?
I know this doesn't answer the question, at least not directly, but I am reminded of my favorite uncle. He was still alive when I moved from western NYS to Maryland to teach, and one summer I went back to NYS to visit him, and I invited him to come down for a week sometime so I could take him to places in Washington and Virginia. "They got trees down there?", he asked. "Well, yeah". "They got roads and grocery stores there?" "Yeah". "Well we got all those things here to. No need to go there".
Some people don't want to learn...especially about people who are different than them.
I was always different. Well, at least once I got out into the world of college. As long as I didn't put myself in literal danger, I wanted to meet the people who were different than me. And it's a good thing. Because I grew up in an all-white town (the only people who were truly different than the rest of us was the family of my dentist and the family of the town's optometrist -- they were Jewish. That was our only minority. And when I went to college, at least in my major (geology) and minor (education), there were only white students and teachers...100%. But when I went to teach in Prince George's County in Maryland, I suddenly had classes and a colleague teaching staff that was about 50% African-American. I think I did more learning that first year than my students.
And that's the way the South seems to operate even today. They want to associate only with people just like themselves. As you point out, sexual orientation-wise, but also religiously, and racially.
Wondering why Concerned Homeowner is concsrned that children see the rainbows or even learn that LBGT people exists. Children of atheists get exposed to churches and giant crosses al the time. Jewish children get exposed to signs peomoting Jesus all the time plus to Christmas.
Just another example if an individual trying to use hiscreligious beliefs against a person who does not share them.
AA why dont you make a post that this should be blamed on fubdy atheists?
Wondering why Concerned Homeowner is concsrned that children see the rainbows or even learn that LBGT people exists. Children of atheists get exposed to churches and giant crosses al the time. Jewish children get exposed to signs peomoting Jesus all the time plus to Christmas.
Just another example if an individual trying to use hiscreligious beliefs against a person who does not share them.
AA why dont you make a post that this should be blamed on fubdy atheists?
He will decry "fundie atheists" doubtless but probably now you're giving him ideas and he'll start spouting about "fudby" atheists as well, without bothering to explain exactly what he means.
What could the SBC and others dominant in that region reasonably do to take a stand against this fascistic acting out? I would expect, given such organization's promotion of agape love and grace, to see campaigns against hatred, suspicion, otherizing and coercion, and explaining that treating people you differ with as fellow human beings deserving of ordinary respect and kindness, is entirely compatible with their views about what is or isn't "sinful". I would expect "church discipline" to reign in someone like this letter writer.
Perhaps such efforts exist, and I'm not aware of it?
To partly answer my own question, according to a site that calls itself The Biblical Recorder, there is at least mention of a goal of more diversity being discussed by the SBC. No telling how much urgency is behind this initiative or if it's more than window dressing, and I'm guessing it has more in mind racial diversity than a broader inclusiveness that might bring in LGBTQ persons, or even women (I cannot find words like "gender", "women", "LGBTQ", "gay" or "homosexual" in this article). But it does evidence at least some awareness on the part of some SBC members that there's a problem of some kind around diversity. Baby steps! Maybe.
Some people don't want to learn...especially about people who are different than them.
Yes, some people are incurious, and some of THOSE are what I'd term "aggressively incurious, and proud of it".
Contrary to some, and sort of contrary to my own inclinations, I do not think that in authoritarian Christianity this is a problem of lack of intelligence (curiosity being a harbinger of intelligence, after all) so much as being deliberately blinkered, and trained from the cradle to be so. It protects you from barking your shins on pesky ol' reality when you want to maintain fictions such as that gay people are evil, sneaky, recruiting pedophiles and society-undermining agents of Satan. Or just more generally want to maintain simplistic black-and-white narratives about good, evil, "sin", etc.
So rather than fundamentalists being stupid in some inherent sense, being deliberately and habitually blinkered makes them stupid. Or more exactly it makes them purposely uninformed and ignorant, which effectively makes them stupid.
It is kind of sad really. We have a poster in R&S who says he was raped by an uncle he describes as "gay" and the poster spouts all sorts of thoroughly discredited denialist propaganda about the scientific research around both pedophilia and LGBTQ matters. He does this out of a place of personal pain. Still, he does it and no one in fundamentalism is about to correct him, much less substantively help him to heal; in fact they are probably glad for the firebrand's support. Since he doesn't (want to) know that the majority of pedophiles are sexually repulsed by adults of either gender and predate upon children of both genders, he assumes they are therefore gay. I suspect his uncle was not even gay, but merely a pedophile. But it's hard for someone who experienced what he did to think of it in other terms.
Of course unless one claims that most male fundamentalist Christians were raped by pedophiles, which would be an absurd claim, the majority of fundamentalist men do not have this guy's excuse. My impression is more that they have had instilled in them a FEAR of the scenario that actually happened to this poster, though, because they have an "ick factor" around gays (and gay men in particular) that has clearly become a cultural presupposition of some kind. This can only be due to extensive and multigenerational indoctrination in hateful lies by the subculture, a good deal of which is likely by turns generated and reinforced by churches of that type.
Would this kind of "thinking" exist apart from Christian fundamentalism? Doubtless, but I do not think it would flourish so much nor so persistently. The problem is that we probably can't prove it, as we lack a time machine for A/B testing purposes. What I DO know for sure is that fundamentalist Churches have a moral obligation to combat bigotry and hatred in all its forms in light of their own teachings, and their sanguine lack of interest in the bigotry and hatred rampant among their members (for whatever reason it is there) and their lack of doing something about it, is damning.
To the topic that religion bears some responsibility for how it influences its adherents comes this situation where a woman had a string of lights on her porch in a rainbow configuration and some "neighbor" left this cowardly anonymous note for her after previously threatening to burn the house down:
The irony is that the woman in question may well not even be LGBTQ or had some sort of LGBTQ activism in mind. She's a mother of 4 in Baltimore who likes rainbows. To her credit she did a kickstarter campaign to make her yard even more "relentlessly gay" and got several times the funding target and is currently contracting out painters, etc.
Now this screed is clearly the action of an individual, but an individual who is part of a church who has been inculcated with certain aversions, fears, and bigotries; or at the very least a person who already had these aversions, fears and bigotries, whom the church has failed to remake into a better person with an alleged "new nature in Christ".
This general mindset is so prevalent in the South of the US as to be almost a given, to the extent my daughter is in the process of escaping that region as she finds it oppressive and, increasingly, dangerous to live there with any freedom of expression at all. These kinds of aggressive actions exist there, not just in neighborhoods but in workplaces and everyday interactions in the public square.
What could the SBC and others dominant in that region reasonably do to take a stand against this fascistic acting out? I would expect, given such organization's promotion of agape love and grace, to see campaigns against hatred, suspicion, otherizing and coercion, and explaining that treating people you differ with as fellow human beings deserving of ordinary respect and kindness, is entirely compatible with their views about what is or isn't "sinful". I would expect "church discipline" to reign in someone like this letter writer.
Perhaps such efforts exist, and I'm not aware of it?
Oooh-kayyyy. So, the news flash here is, that there are not only individuals out there, but entire congregations, who have knee-jerk reactions to anything resembling, or even hinting at, a rainbow? Do they forbid their kids from playing with that rainbow pony toy, whatever that was? No happy rainbow symbols of any kind allowed around their kids? No multi-colored Christmas lights allowed in their neighborhood? And they believe the police will enforce this?
Good to know the country is becoming even more unhinged than previously observed.
The neighbors need to relocate, and form their own HOA, where they can enforce their hysteria on other residents to their hearts' content.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 06-20-2022 at 11:18 AM..
Oooh-kayyyy. So, the news flash here is, that there are not only individuals out there, but entire congregations, who have knee-jerk reactions to anything resembling, or even hinting at, a rainbow? Do they forbid their kids from playing with that rainbow pony toy, whatever that was? No happy rainbow symbols of any kind allowed around their kids? No multi-colored Christmas lights allowed in their neighborhood? And they believe the police will enforce this?
Good to know the country is becoming even more unhinged than previously observed.
The neighbors need to relocate, and form their own HOA, where they can enforce their hysteria on other residents to their hearts' content.
Yesterday my bf's sister posted a picture of her five-year-old in front of her birthday cake, which was a rainbow theme. Would the SBC members smash the cake?
Fortunately, she is not in the US.
Back in the days of the old AOL message boards, when I used this same screen name, I had a relentless fundamentalist sending me Bible verses and dire warnings of what I faced if I didn't repent, convinced that Mighty Queen meant I was a gay man. Even when I informed her that I was a straight mother who used to tell her kid to call me the Mighty Queen and that's where the name came from, she replied that the "Lord had revealed to her" that I was lying.
Yesterday my bf's sister posted a picture of her five-year-old in front of her birthday cake, which was a rainbow theme. Would the SBC members smash the cake?
Fortunately, she is not in the US.
Back in the days of the old AOL message boards, when I used this same screen name, I had a relentless fundamentalist sending me Bible verses and dire warnings of what I faced if I didn't repent, convinced that Mighty Queen meant I was a gay man. Even when I informed her that I was a straight mother who used to tell her kid to call me the Mighty Queen and that's where the name came from, she replied that the "Lord had revealed to her" that I was lying.
There's just no point with some people.
And here I thought it may be a play onnThe Mighty Quinn
First thought which comes to mind after reading the OP is; Never underestimate the power of willful ignorance. People tend to pre-judge everyone else.
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