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the other side

Protect Me From Your Followers

by James Blackmon

I used to have a T-shirt that read, "Jesus, Protect Me From Your Followers." I loved that shirt. I wish I had it now.

The irony of needing to be protected from the followers of the embodiment of unconditional love and compassion is delicious. Especially if you've been on the receiving end of the venom spewed by many so-called Christians.

As LGBTQ folks, we all have experienced this vitriol. It seems as we gain ground in our fight for equality, the pushback from right-wing Christians is getting worse.

Obviously, all this talk of "religious freedom" and "religious exemption" is just an excuse to discriminate. In its June decision involving the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, the US Supreme Court said business run by religious executives doesn't have to provide full health coverage to women. An Ohio legislative bill early this year would have allowed religious business owners to refuse service to LGBT people or anyone else they don't like.

How could any Christian, in the name of Jesus, profess a desire to be exempt from actually behaving like Christwho, incidentally, never refused service to anyone who asked in faith?

How

can

when I pondered a question that has never been logically answered to my satisfaction: If Adam and Eve were the first humans and they only had two sons, where did their wives come from?

As I got older I became even more skeptical when I considered the incestuous implications of Adam and Eve and their two sons populating the entire earth. Ewww! As a mature adult, however, the credibility issue began to take on new significance when I realized that the church bleeds hypocrisy because it is infested with hypocrites.

I used to angrily sit and listen to sermons and comments about how sinful we gays are from self-righteous pastors, televangelists, and other "Christians" who have children outside of marriage, multiple ex-spouses, mistresses (or boyfriends), drug problems and other things they preach against. The Bible clearly says, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of

Win

you souls for Christ

when Christ isn't

apparent in your

own soul?

Jesus preached against hypocrisy, yet the blatant, unapologetic, un-Christlike, hypocritical behavior of so many self-described Christians is astounding. How can you win souls for Christ when Christ isn't apparent in your own soul?

The church has always had a credibility issue for me. I grew up in the church. My parents are retired church musicians, and I started playing for church when I was 8 years old.

I remember being about 5 or 6 and I'd just seen a museum exhibit about cavemen. I'd seen their bones and other artifacts, and it got me to wondering if Adam and Eve were cavepeople. Mom told me to ask our minister. I did. He told me: "Cavepeople are not real. Adam and Eve are real. You can't believe everything, but you can always believe the Bible."

I thought to myself, "Bullshit. I just saw the bones." Well, not exactly bullshit, but the 5-year-old equivalent because I knew he was wrong. That began my mistrust of biblical teachings and the church, which was later underscored 36 august 2014

God" (Romans 3:23). So, why do some Christians feel so obliged to "...look at the speck of sawdust in [their] brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in [their] own eye? How can [they] say to [their] brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in [their] own eye?" (Matthew 7:3-4)

It infuriates me when it's said that my 20-year committed relationship to the same man is destroying the sanctity of marriage. But quickie wedding chapels in Las Vegas are not? Where is the Christian outrage over that? Where is the Christian outrage over the 40 percent divorce rate for opposite-sex couples?

In July, a California pastor and two members of his Christian church were sentenced to prison for torturing a 13year-old boy. They called what they did discipline: forcing him to dig a grave that they said would be his, placing him in a shower tied to a chair, spraying him with mace and more. One of the men rubbed salt in his open wounds. He was made to sit in the center of a group of men at a Bible study, and the pastor lifted the boy's shirt and squeezed his nipples with a pair of pliers.

For this, the pastor received two years in prison and the other two received a year in jail plus three years probation. Where the hell is the goddamned Christian outrage at that?

Your silence is deafening!

Can Sarah Palin see heaven from Alaska, too?

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