On 29 Aug 2005 08:55:24 -0700, "Bill C" <
[email protected]> wrote:
> I haven't seen
>anyone like Billy Graham or Roberson condemning this **** either, maybe
>I missed it, but when your people connected to your cirlce of friends
>do things like it rubs off on you.
Why should they? He is a smalltime nut case. He doesn't represent much
of anything or anyone. And Robertson IMO is a once bigtime nutcase,
but that's my personal opinion. You're waiting for one nutcase to
apologize for another?
Since Phelps calls Bush the AntiChrist and the war in Iraq The Blood
War, I'm rather guessing he and Bush (and Graham) aren't fellow
travelers - in any direction. So why did you assume that they might
be, to the point that Bush and Graham (as opposed to, say, the head of
the local Archdiocese) should be apologizing for his actions? I think
you jumped the wrong way on a whole bunch of conclusions.
And your comments about church leaders and gays seem to point only at
the conservative 'low church' churches. Yet the Anglicans worldwide
and the Episcopalians within the U.S., the Presbyterians and, most
recently, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America - all blue state,
high church constituents - have had serious difficulty with the issue.
All of them have had pastors/ministers/priests talk of what the Bible
forbids and condemns.
Reform Jews are slightly ahead of their game in tolerance of gays and
gay rabbis, but the Conservatives are pretty much where the high
church churches are located - and if it isn't the low ground of
tolerance, it isn't exactly the high ground either.
And maybe I've drawn my opinions about the Quakers from the ones that
attend the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, but I was
surprised that even the more liberal national assemblies are not all
that liberal. (Or maybe its the area - the Baltimore Assembly has
taken one of the stronger stands for acceptance and tolerance.)
And while us UUs like to think we are pretty tolerant (as long as we
don't have to include Republicans in the mix), the lesbian groups
don't particularly agree, at least in the UUCA. Far as I can tell,
though, the Buddhists in the church seem to have gotten past the issue
- but who can tell?
And why does an anti-war protest have to immediately have political
linkages? This guy evidently doesn't have any as one starting point.
He hates everyone. And with the major Democratic leadership having
voted for most ramping points on the war and currently being for more
troops (on the speculative assumption that it will either reduce
casualties or the time we spend in Iraq or both (- geez, what if
they're wrong and we just have more targets for the same amount of
time?), exactly how does antiwar protest become Democrat or
Republican?
I don't need to know the position of the Republican Party or the
Democratic Party to make moral decisions. And I don't need Graham or
Bush (or God help us, Robertson) to tell me that Phelps is a nut case,
a bigot and a religious kook.
Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...