PHOENIX (AP) – The Southern Baptist Convention has started an initiative to “liberate” gays from their homosexuality by befriending them and convincing them they should accept Jesus as their savior. At the denomination’s annual meeting, which ends Wednesday night, leaders asked their 42,000 churches to reach out compassionately to gays, focusing on how Christianity can save them. “Homosexuals can find freedom from this sinful, destructive lifestyle,” said Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptists’ public policy arm. “They can be redeemed. They can be liberated.”
But the denomination took pains this year to draw a distinction between themselves and activists like anti-gay pastor Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., who travels the country picketing religious meetings and other public events, carrying signs that read, “God Hates Fags.” Land insisted Southern Baptists wanted to help gays, and encouraged them to come forward to seek support. “We want you to know that we love you, and more importantly Jesus loves you, and there is a way out,” Land said. President Bush addressed the meeting by videotape, calling the Southern Baptists “faithful servants” and asking God to bless them.
I just don’t get the notion that people seem to have that they should force their religion or religious beliefs onto anyone else.
At the risk of being jumped on…I am a Baptist and I live in the South, but I absolutely don’t hold to most of the SBC’s doctrine especially in the last few years…they are getting WAY out there IMO. Of course I dance and drink so that right there is a problem…
A person’s life is THAT person’s life. I might not agree with it but I don’t consider it my holy mission to liberate them.
I say we start an initiative to lure Southern Baptists into homosexuality. “You can be cured of the evil of Southern Baptistity—just gimme a big ol’ kiss, you hunka burnin’ love!”
Hell, I’m not even gay, but I’ll do some Southern Baptist dame just out of sheer orneryness.
I saw a sticker that said “I have nothing against God, it’s his fan club I can’t stand” and that’s how I feel about Southern Baptists that are taking this stance. The ignorance is astounding.
Like Bush liberated Iraq? So we can expect Southern Baptist “Shock and Awe”? Yikes!
And what the frell do they mean by “a sinful, destructive lifestyle”? “Sinful”? <shrugs> “Destructive”? I would very much like to know how my partner and I are destructive to anyone. We work (well, he does; I’m on the dole right now), we pay taxes, we buy groceries, we watch DVDs; how is that destructive?
Look, I don’t tell Souther Baptists to pick up the beer cans around their trailers, get library cards, or stop wearing polyester, so why do they feel they have the right to tell me how to live? Haven’t those shitstains ever heard of “live and let live”?
How odd is it that Bush denounces rule by mullahs in Iran when he endorses it in the US?
Boy howdy, I’d love to get my hands on one of those stickers.
What’s really twisted about this SBC initiative is the way it completely perverts the meaning of friendship. When you “befriend” someone for the purpose of using them to accomplish some agenda of your own, that isn’t friendship.
One doesn’t use friends. With rare exceptions, one doesn’t assume one is better situated to tell them how to run their life than they are themselves. And one certainly doesn’t make friends with an eye towards changing them.
If they have such a screwed-up idea of what friendship is, how can they possibly have a clue about love?
Isn’t it obvious? Just by existing, you destroy “moral fiber”. Just like drugs, drinking, dancing, living in sin, profanity, skirts that are more than one inch above the knee, and anything invented after 1926.
However, since we have all these things which seem to destroy “moral fiber”, prehaps we could make it a bit easier, and come up with a “moral fiber” substitute. Y’know, like nylon, except in an ethical sense.
FTR…I drink my beer from a bottle. I don’t live in a trailer. I have a library card. Wearing polyester? Yuck! I cuss like a sailor sometimes. And as my dear husband can attest to, my skirts are more than an inch above my knee. Hmmpph. I even DARE to wear 2 piece bathing suits!!! :eek:
Hey…maybe I’m not a Baptist after all???
But seriously, I’m with you guys on this one…I don’t think the SBC needs to befriend anyone to try and “win them over” or whatever…
Let people live the way they want to. If they are wrong, then so be it. If you are…so be it. But stay out of everybody’s business and don’t mount some campaign to convert everybody!
That’s why I always differentiate between “Baptist” and “Southern Baptist.” it’s the “Southern” that seems to send them over the edge, somehow.
But you can always rely on the Southern Baptists, Al Sharpton, PETA, Jack Chick, Fred Phelps, Michael Moore, etc., to periodically come out with the same hilarious routines they’ve been pulling since Hector was a pup, to brighten up our day.
If you want to know how destructive the “lifestyle” is, all you have to do is look up Paul Cameron’s work. As I understand it, we (gay men) all die by age 35 (eeeks, I’m two years overdue!), our community is the only thing keeping the “adult diaper” companies in business, and the simple act of affection between members of the same sex causes AIDS (never mind those pesky virus thingies). So, I can see why they’re so concerned!
Having been the victim of several attempts at conversion, warding them off is usually fairly easy. See, you get them to agree with you that it is impossible for God to make a mistake, then you show them the first two chapters of Genesis, where God makes the earth twice in different orders. Usually blows their minds and they wander off shaking their heads. (Well, usually…)
Isn’t it better that they aren’t advocating, say, kicking your gay son out of the house? They certainly mean better than Fred Phelps.
Isn’t it a majorly Christian thing to welcome your neighbors in, no matter their sin? Aren’t they being told to be, well, singularly Christian?
Now I know I sure as hell don’t want to be preached to, converted, told “Your life is sinful, darlin’, and we don’t approve, but we just pray that God will show you the light.” I get that crap for not being Christian.
But it’s a damn sight better than getting the crap beaten out of you, in my opinion.
Just my $0.02. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was nice?
