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The past president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ed Young and current pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston recently joined Pastor Kendall Baker and David Welch in denouncing Houston’s recent Equal Rights Ordinance. Young claimed equality in Houston was a “staggering moral issue” because equality, according to Young, Baker and Welch, discriminates against cisgender heterosexual Southern Baptists like himself. At a rally for ending equality, Young proclaimed, “The verbiage of the proposed ordinance is couched in non-discrimination language but, without question, discriminates against people, like you and me, who want to live by our own personal convictions… [LGBT] rights should end where our morality and rights begin.”
Young, Baker, Welch and the Southern Baptist Convention are no strangers to hypocrisy. Young, a pious cheerleader for the Texas religiopolitical machine, even took the stand to testify that Enron’s CEO – proven huckster Ken Lay – was trustworthy, saying under oath that Lay was “a man who keeps his word.” Young’s son was the subject of national scandal for apparently duping followers of his father’s multi-site megachurch into supporting his excessively luxurious lifestyle. After promoting fears of being inundated by transgender sexual predators should Houston’s equality ordinance pass, Baker, and Welch are currently mired in a sexual assault scandal wherein Baker sexually assaulted and harassed women and Welch attempted to get Baker off the hook. After supporting slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, the effort to crush the Equal Rights Act, marriage equality for gay and interracial couples, the “submission” of women to men, efforts to end science-based education, the Southern Baptist Convention has come out as being opposed to the existence of transgender people.
While the Convention’s move to oppose the existence of trans people has drawn criticism, the Convention is no stranger to having its actions criticized. The Convention faced past criticism over the way it handled its child rape problem and more specifically, that they refuse to track their own pedophiles. The Convention’s Florida arm was held liable for in effect, facilitating the rape of children, and recently vowed to fight to pay damages to the rape victim. Some rape survivors have taken it upon themselves to track the child rape issues that plagues Convention members since the Convention itself won’t.
A separate Florida case highlights the child rape issue facing Convention members:

Gilyard, once rising-star of Southern Baptist Convention
After being convicted of assaulting two young girls, Southern Baptist Convention star Darrell Gilyard began preaching at a new church. In a move that brought international attention, the Baptist church banned children so that the pedophile could continue to preach since Gilyard’s probation forbade him from coming in contact with children. Recently, a judge lifted the ban to allow the convicted child molester access to children.
The Religious Harold reported:
A native of Palatka, Fla., Gilyard rose to fame in the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1980s under the mentorship of former SBC presidents Jerry Vines and Paige Patterson. Jerry Falwell’s pulpit gave Gilyard a platform to share on national television his dramatic testimony of growing up a homeless orphan who lived under a bridge, a story that was later discredited.
The attention helped Gilyard attain several pastorates, until confidence in him eroded after a series of sex scandals in the early 1990s. The Dallas Morning News published stories in 1991 saying dozens of women had accused Gilyard of sexual misconduct, with some alleging rape.
Gilyard began as pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Community Church in April 1993. He resigned Jan. 4, 2008, after a member of the congregation filed a police report claiming Gilyard sent sexually explicit text messages to her daughter.
Gilyard was arrested Jan. 14, 2008, and charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct. He pleaded guilty May 21, 2009, to molesting one girl and sending lewd text messages to another.
While no resolution was made to track the problem of child rapists among its own Convention membership, the Convention did make it clear that they are opposed to the reality of transgender people:
We affirm distinctions in masculine and feminine roles as ordained by God as part of the created order, and that those distinctions should find an echo in every human heart. We condemn efforts to alter one’s bodily identity to bring it into line with one’s perceived gender identity…[and] we continue to oppose steadfastly all efforts by any court or state legislature to validate transgender identity as morally praiseworthy.
After years of membership decline, the Convention leadership is again scratching its head over yet another year of declining membership. Commenting on new findings showing that Convention membership is still in decline, Frank Page, president and CEO of the Convention Executive Committee, said, “The numbers of people in our continent are increasing dramatically while our evangelistic efforts are failing in many places and in many ways.”
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Truth, thankfully, like air in a tire, refuses to be confined. This year (2014), as every year, brings many changes, proving the adage that change will never be denied it’s place in history. Truth, like fumes, has a way of taking one back to the source. In a 3-D world, context defines everything and always has. Micro cultures must always pursue change within and parallel to the system of codified government under which such they reside. One such system of government is the democratic republic of the USA that espouses the inalienable right of personal happiness. Our nation’s founders personally experienced the incessant and daily friction of life under a government that sponsored and favored a national denomination. This is our context.
Blessed with a fresh start, our founders very wisely amended the US Constitution, never to prohibit personal worship but to forever banish it as an official tool of the new government. Far beyond hearsay or opinion, it knew that government-sponsored religion placed government far above it’s role as hallway monitor to a role of hallway bully, as it oppressed the affairs of its citizens by legally approving and thus favoring one manner of worship at the exclusion of others. Herein lies the extreme danger of once more marrying religion to government, as personal belief, however well-intended, continually seeks to impose its subjective will through that institution that wields the seemingly-unlimited power to limit or remove personal liberties, or to execute punishment—national government. To the extent that it is able, such is the intent behind this SBC resolution.
One need not wait to reach age of maturity to begin learning life-long lessons, one of which includes a playground lesson about one seemingly immutable human fallibility: to subjugate others through oppression commonly referred to as bullying. I’ve never had the innate instinct of self defense, perhaps (or not) attributed to my female-identified mind, although of course aggression or self-defense are not solely owned by males. It has had to be “trained” into me. To be sure, I did have a strong temper on occasion but it went away with the arrival of maturity; temperament of course is often an Achilles heel of both genders.
An oppressive bully also matures, but like a glutton that will not be denied, often continues his abusive behavior. Within society, adult bullies take their place and learn to go stealth to avoid overt detection. It need not be said that religious institutions, not to be confused with the exercise of personal faith, extend forgiveness and open arms to almost everyone, and far too often have proven to harbor deviants and bullies. To be fair, religious institutions perform many noble deeds, especially in disasters, so under no circumstances is this intended as wholesale judgment, just a well-known statement of fact.
The SBC, residing in a context where government and religion live in different and unrelated houses, no doubt if it could would be enacting government legislation not unlike that of other nations who have recently legalized punitive measures based on lifestyle and subjective faith-based morality. As such it is restricted to codifying its own in-house “statutes” that it wishes could carry “the force of law” to the fullest extent possible. Given that its worshipers populate all occupations, undoubtedly this SBC “fatwa” will have destructive consequences on LGBT folk, not unlike that of depriving many trans females from life-sustaining employment, as occurred with me.
LGBT Americans, governed by a body that declared independence from it’s own religious oppressor over 230 years prior, finally are allowed to redeem their tickets to the Declaration of Independence celebration, not as “separate but equal”, but as “equal”. As such, the truth of who has been playing gatekeeper to the party reveals itself. Like fumes that go back to the source, 2014 is revealing precisely who the LGBT oppressors, not-so-cleverly hiding in plain sight, are and always have been. The SBC, one such oppressor, is embarrassing itself in a very public way as it desperately and no doubt vainly seeks to remain relevant by trying to push the toothpaste back into the tube.
As LGBT Americans finally receive equal and overdue status as Americans, our oppressors will and are having no choice but to come out of hiding. Like desperate hooligans who cloud their intelligence (if any) with crimes of passion, faith-based LGBT oppressors are coming out behind cover. Like any oppressor who has long enjoyed immunity, they push back (and uphill) against LGBT Americans. Having no constitutional or civil right to do so, nonetheless, as this SBC resolution demonstrates, they flex their religious muscles. They abuse word phrases that they cut/paste everywhere: “forcing lifestyle”, “forcing my children”, “unnatural”, “God created male Adam & female Eve”, “constitutional right of privacy (although it’s from government, not between persons’, etc.
As LGB/Trans rights progress, more and more push-back will and is revealing who our oppressors have been all along, and sadly, far too often many have been hiding in the same LGBT home. Over 230 years of LGBT oppression translates to shattered lives, no doubt at tremendous opportunity cost to our nation. Such costs can never be recovered, like blood that has already spilled. Still, LGB/Trans hemorrhaging must stop and is stopping. In a nation that has established a wall of separation between public government and religion, this SBC resolution will take its place in history, but today may it serve to remind us of why this separation was deemed crucial to begin with. May it serve to alert us to the extreme danger should we fall asleep at our post, about religious-sponsored bigotry and its threat to life and limb to present or future Americans should it take its place in bed with government.
Thank you SBC Convention; you intended this for ill, but we will take this as good—a good remedial lesson on why the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause makes our potentially-great nation, as President Reagan once said so eloquently: “the shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.”
“The verbiage of the proposed ordinance is couched in non-discrimination language but, without question, discriminates against people, like you and me, who want to live by our own personal convictions…”
Unfortunately, people like Young define “live by our own personal convictions” as feeling entitle to order and require the “purification” of everything that they encounter in daily life so as to suit their liking. “Living by his own personal convictions” means never having to see, hear, or even think about anything that he finds unsettling.
They want to live life in a bubble, yet retain the power and authority to forcibly conform the outside world to their ideal existence. “Living by their convictions” implies converting their entire environments into a nightmare kind of “utopia.”
If we were to apply the same audacity, imperiousness and overreach to our own respective convictions, we would be demanding laws that forbid the expression of anything that offends our sensibilities. We would be demanding the removal of all books that conflict with our ideas all from public and school libraries, just like the Religious Right currently does with its “family friendly libraries” crusades.
But no, Mr. Young, we are not like you. We don’t require that everyone fall into line and never display or utter a contradictory thought in order for us to “live by our convictions.”
He says, “LGBT rights should end where our morality and rights begin.” But for him, his “rights” extend to the ends of the flat earth thath is ersatz version of God purportedly created.
Please pardon my testing. I’m trying to connect with WordPress, but I’m having trouble.
I just learned about this site.
I hereby extend a solicited pardon. Will you courteously accept 😉
Why, certainly 🙂
Wow, I more than love what you wrote. Beyond the emotion of “love what you wrote”, you, my hereby pardoned sister, have successfully connected with us Aliens here, as we bask under the warm and enlightened rays made possible by Transadvocate.com and its highly esteemed editor Cristan Williams.
Teasing intro aside, your great commentary does serve to remind us of this:
When one hears these two words used “verbiage” and “couched”, like euphemisms that conceal true and ulterior-motivated meanings, run and run away pronto. Of course, I too would run, but not away….in “offensive defense” toward a “combatant” not couched but crouched ready to pounce. Everyone knows that “verbiage” is a euphemism for “all that crap” and “couched” but a euphemism for “disguised”. The very use of such euphemisms—rather than making use of “words” in the stead of “verbiage” and “included in” in the stead of “couched”—is a between-the-lines revelation of a writer who has had his or her apple cart overturned.
The writers charge that “verbiage is couched” serves as a prelude—a hint—of what he is about to do: give himself permission to insert words that are not there, words that he is about to insert and insert them he does. Sadly, he knows not making this refutation, he is but inserting a size 12 boot deep into his esophagus, so deep that it will quickly see sunshine, but from a different point of entry.
As I stated in my “very brief” 😉 comment 3 clicks above, and something I have commonly experienced in my role as enforcer and public guardian of safety, persons otherwise very bright compromise their intelligence by succumbing to emotion. Anger can and will impede not only skills but rational thought if not kept in a short leash and used as intended: to strengthen one in defense of survival or safety. Prisons are filled beyond capacity with both males and females who have lived with anger on a very long leash. Future apologies and remorse, like an uncorked bottle of champagne that has been shaken, will never retroactively undo the damage to self, others, and society that has been meted out, fueled by anger.
What am I trying to say in English-speak? Simple. A man, whose personal faith has been clouded by institutionalized religion, publicly embarrasses himself as he presents verbal diarrhea: a severe case of the PSD (Public Stupidity Disorder). Certainly he is not stupid, but what he says is very, very stupid. Allow me to explain:
This legally-incorporated governmental body (City of Houston), is legally obligated to enforce not only local, state laws and federal law but also the highest law of the land: namely in this instance the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution that mandates, not suggests, equal protection to all citizens. Thus, this Houston ordinance offers not a new or original concept, but simply re-affirms that “in our house”, the 14th Amendment will continue to be upheld. This should not have to be said, but because of religious-sponsored bigotry that lives in flesh, glass houses with names of “Young, Welch, and Baker”, which deftly conceal their personal animus while cloaked in religious accouterments, evidently in Houston, a history and legal remedial lesson was in order.
A public city ordinance (Houston) carries no weight or standing inside the private worship house. The two are distinctly different venues and yet the private worship house mice will have none of this separation—why who is government to tell them not to discriminate, in public no less? As usual I have gone off on a tangent but allow me to digress: What objectively qualifies the statement made by Young as very stupid? Easy:
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In the same sentence, he tries to spin 14th Amendment non-discrimination as “discrimination” and as if that isn’t bad enough, he then uses two words “personal convictions” to contest an ordinance codified by a government body that has no authority or standing to impact personal worship whatsoever. The two, under constitutional law, are mutually exclusive. He pushes the size 12 boot further down his voice box as he sincerely (apparently) juxtaposes public civil rights, guaranteed to all (short of criminal conviction) under the 14th Amendment with the private right of conviction and moral-based private worship, also guaranteed under the 1st Amendment. Public human civil rights guaranteed to all, LGBT persons included, already end at the church doorstep. Playing the role of moral police, so often (illegally) performed against Trans females is hardly an example of “living by personal convictions”.
Such a role is an anti-Jesus violent-by-consequence role that far exceeds that of mere enforcer; the destructive results that extricate Trans females from an equal role in society often amount to a sentence of death. Forced to survive on the street, many Trans females are murdered; for many of us this is the culmination of a journey that began when an employer decided that “LGBT rights must end where their morality begins”. Lest it may seem that I am overwhelming you with over-exaggeration, may I direct your attention up to the URL address bar. Once there, enter “TDOR”, sans the quotes.
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I should know from whence I speak: as I write, I am one of those disenfranchised Trans females I continue to refer to as an example. Striving to contribute to the payroll tax coffers is still, for me, a work in progress—the blow to self-worth from Trans employment discrimination, especially when no “trans group” offered help—is proving far more difficult to overcome than I realized as I was “shown the door”. How to reconcile lifelong skills with employer revulsion? To this day, I confess that I dunno, especially when one is so loathed as to be “uninvited” even to family funerals. When I write about Trans discrimination, it is not only about others, unlike many written “perspectives” written by others who have never had to take that loooooong walk to the dumpster….pardon me….————> EXIT door. They write wearing the hat of “trans expert”—-never knowing the destruction that they sow.
Clueless, they have no clue about that walk to perdition, or by non-accepting “acceptance” manifested by a sister who “uninvited” me as she said “Our family accepts you, but you will need to get your hair cut before you go to the funeral”. Sure, I could go anyway, but why crash a funeral? Of course, I knew that prayer, like vapor and truth, is heard. Since the young age of 21, when God Herself answered my prayer (see other comment), if I “found favor” before, She will find favor in me once more. 😉
great column, but one minor point of order. The graphic refers to a missionary Baptist Church is having removed children so that they might continue to have this man as pastor… Missionary Baptist is a predominantly black Baptist denomination that has no connection to the SBC. Otherwise spot on.
Who claimed that the molester’s church was part of the SBC? The molester was a SBC star who – because they refuse to track their molester’s and child rapists – was able to move from church to church until caught.
Now the heterosexual preacher who can not be around woman because of making sexual harassment remakes. And a possible child molester is calling reverse discrimination on the Houston equal rights ordinance. He is joined by others of the same charter make up. this combination most be well versed in bigotry especially in a church founded to support slavery and every thing connected to hold a minority group down. Especially starting a seamier campaign against their opponents.
Whatever you do to the least of my Brothers you do to me MT 25.45. It means the priest that molest children molested Jesus, cheating televangelist cheat of wife they are cheating Jesus, those killing member of other religion or even knocking other beliefs are mocking Jesus, Those prosecuting gays are prosecuting Jesus. This is a test of Jesus love that we all shall remember.
In today’s news, a religion that was literally founded upon support for slavery turns out to be run by bigots. Who knew?
I write far too much far too often, due to a typing speed that is just shy of 80 WPM over a 3 min test. Because I am trans prolific, with a conviction of heart that being idle brings more of the same, and that positive change happens only from being active, many truly believe it satisfies a need for attention. To my nemesis’ I offer this:
“Truth spoken for self expires with self; truth spoken for others echoes forever”. Dee Omally
Having experienced the burning fire of trans discrimination for having been forthright about my transition, I know the face of hate. Tossing a human being out of a job is akin to tossing out the garbage. It’s not playing the victim; it’s being victimized. It hasn’t kept me back or down, but it has kicked my ass right off the bench into the trans football field. If civil rights violations can happen to someone who volunteered life in defense of civil rights (US Constitution), then it can happen to anyone and so long as they continue to happen to trans females/males, we are far from earning the right to claim “We are the greatest nation on earth.”
I vowed to be hate’s worst enemy, to the best of my ability. In any conversation, credibility is crucial and nothing is more credible than personal experience, even if it defies belief. I would much rather never talk about my personal experiences, would they not be essential to establishing expertise on the subject matter. We all have value, and my value is never more than anyone else. Military service, public safety, trans discrimination & a transition are areas I can speak for from personal experience, but is never intended to over-inflate ego or self worth.
The battle against tran bigotry includes clearly defined adversaries: religion and sadly many in the LGB side. So long as they insist that we must allow ourselves to be verbally abused/bullied by them, pretending that terminology is not a conveyance for hate sentiment, we shall push back even harder. Treating a teenager like an 8 year old has never worked, and neither will treating trans females like male-identified drag queens.
You Go!!!! and this L is not against you. we are all on the same side. and hate between our community will not help any of us. we need to stand together.
As most do know, I am an equal-opportunity adversary to hate, no matter the name tag. The most potent form of hate and truly the most effective is when it manifests itself in the uniform of friend. I reserve my harshest critique for my LGB family who should know far better; the trans battle today is the LGB battles of yesterday, and empathy should be a default emotion. How dare many LGB “friends”, in typical male raucous fashion even if in drag, ignore our pleas based on our real-world reality that trans slurs do exist? How dare they pretend to be so stupid not to know that the same words can have both safe and unsafe meanings?—that Dick here is a name and dick there is a tool for pleasure? 😉
I adore women and the friskiness of men. I am white but also Latina. I am tough but can never run away from my big heart. I have a High School diploma, but not more than 1.9 years of college. I have had the legal right to take life, in defense, but employed a presence of mind + ever milligram of my skills to save mine and his. Every breath since his almost-fateful choice to expire my life as I looked down the barrel of a handgun is a breath from me. My invoice he could never repay. It is at the very moment….a trial by fire whence one could expire…that reveals the presence or absence of fear. I confess in place of fear I had anger, that someone had placed my own life in his cross-hairs.
I offer the above episode (1995) that happened during a domestic violence situation (the most dangerous) by a scorn ex-boyfriend to underscore why I abhor all violence, except in self-defense. Both hate and violence will never mitigate itself–may God bless our police forces and military, despite my own biases from a shared experience.
My wish and desire is for the LGB/Trans to grow beyond our differences, which I seriously doubt even more, and with our shared sexuality as common ground, move beyond the current debate. Nothing is more potent than unity in strength, however there is hardly any strength in diluted strength. I hope I am terribly wrong but from my perspective the LGB/Trans “unity” with a retroactive analysis is a history of trans diluted strength. I don’t attend any trans or LGB events (I should) or support groups so perhaps my finger on the pulse is slightly askew. I agree with you in that despite gay this, lesbian that, or trans whatever….aside from a common sexuality of openness, we also have a common foe. To them we are all “faggots”.
As a child, I grew up with the keen realization that all was perfect with the world, well almost. The joys of life were juxtaposed with the tragedies of life. I developed the mindset (still present) that mankind had been “invented” for good, for laughter, fun, family and yet there seemed to be a monkey wrench that had been tossed into this “invention”.
Blessed to grow up outside of a metropolis, indeed in desert wilderness, I had very little distractions. My favorite quiet time was in the garage, book in hand. I grew up in the Catholic faith, and yet was never consumed by it to the point of religious zeal. I instinctively knew that I was being “sold” a subjective presentation of “belief”—knowledge derived perhaps from my voracious reading appetite that presented many other realities. By the 5th grade I was reading college-level books, because I chose books by subject matter and interest, not by reading level.
I remember perusing the Christian bible and instinctively knew that whoever “invented” mankind, he or she would have never written about him/herself in a way that would require an intermediary to explain it. I searched the bible for the nugget—the core message. I concluded that indeed there were not one but two bibles, two very different “testaments”. As I read the Xmas Story, for some reason it made perfect sense to me. It solved the riddle in my head about that “monkey wrench” in the world and offered a hope that was clearly outside of a world gone completely mad.
I constrained my belief to pretty much the Xmas Story, because the rest of it referred to a different people and spoke about hundreds of laws pertinent to them and was filled with gore and unspeakable violence. The rest of it was supplemental to the Xmas Story. I had become a nondenominational Christian, trusting no religion to save me or to lead my way–and to this day this is how I worship. How could religion possibly lead the way if it can’t decide which day is worship day, or whether this or that is permissible? How could religion lead the way if it had led the way to the very reason for Easter?
During my Air Force enlistment, I was active in the base chapel, and to this day it provides some of the best memories, spent with many outside of our MP unit. We assisted the British community, helping with physical labor. By the time I transferred to my 2nd base, I had become quite an agnostic. As I approached the end of my enlistment, I experienced a brand new horrible experience: job burnout. Two months shy of my discharge it became so unbearable that I decided to “quit”. In the military there is no quitting, at least not without compromising an honorable discharge.
One night I firmly decided that I had worked my last day. After thinking it through for several days, I had but one option left to try and derail history. I decided to have a conversation with the God I had read about. It was part challenge and part despair but with only about .5% of faith left in my faith tank. As I walked to the barracks, speaking in thought to the God I was sure wasn’t there, I spoke up in my defense, reinforcing that at 21, I was still morally “pure”—that I had read about His direct contact with His “chosen” few. I mentioned the mustard seed and the lost sheep parables. I mentioned that I truly didn’t believe that it was my destiny to come this close to finishing and yet ending up so far. I made a final plea: if all that I had read about Him/Her is true and that if we truly are equally His “children”, then I too was equally deserving of personal attention. In street parlance, I suppose it would be restated as “put up or shut up”, but from a posture of desperation, not as a challenge.
I shall spare you the details about what occurred as a result of my plea (a vision), for truly what I saw in the moon-lit night sky was denied even by me, at the moment. With new strength I reported for duty the next day, only to read in the base paper that enlistees who had signed up between Sept-Dec were eligible to an early out (Oct for me). Someone had moved the Air Force mountain, and made a way out—precisely as I requested. It was a sequence of events that to this day are reflected in my military DD 214, which shows the early discharge date, and not my date of entry.
I have presented a personal story, hardly shared elsewhere that depicts the “inventor” interrelating with the “invention”— not as testimony but to establish credibility, given the religious context. As a transitioned female, like my trans sisters, who finds herself as the object of SBC “non-condemning” condemnation, I don’t know my future, but I will never forget the past—that one day so long ago at age 21 when I found out that we the “invented” truly had an “inventor”. I have reflected on what happened in those three days from every possible angle and always come to the same conclusion. Having been the recipient of unmerited favor once, I feel safe to extend my own condemnation on those who, in the name of religion, are stepping far above the Christian message by isolating a suffering segment of society (transitioned females) such that “one sin”, assuming validity as such, is isolated from among an infinite number of “sins”. The Christian message is omnidirectional about sin, never unidirectional.
The resolution is based on a reality before the “fall”, where all was good and perfect and creation existed in perfect synergy. It is based on a “creative order” that was and is no longer—we live in a procreated order. The Jewish story tells of a perfect creative order—a beginning—-and also tells of a fall from grace so deep that death, illness, and many physical imperfections now happen. Gender identity stems from a physical brain that contains personality. Gender identity is a manifestation of a sex reality. A sex reality is far more than mere thought. It stems from a physical reality, one yet to be understood, but one thing has never eluded understanding: the “creative order” is no more. It is but a tainted facsimile of intent gone wrong. This SBC resolution not only stands in conflict with biblical depiction, but by walking out on a limb so far as to codify this resolution, history will show that the limb fell under the weight of religious ignorance, malice and bigotry; to give credence to gender/sex reality as the only remaining perfect component from a “perfect order” given procreation and an imperfect reality is one that can never be upheld as valid, especially when evaluated by the Christian bible itself.
The SBC has had a problem with bigotry and oppression that dates back to the formation of their denomination.
Southern Baptist History 101
Religious groups are enslaved by their dogma. They cannot veer from what their leadership promotes, usually the tribal based, desert mentality found in their superstitious bibles that they revere so much. Theocracy is a deadly cocktail of control, pseudo morality, mixed with a large dose of arrogance and judgement.
Personal religion, as in your own heart is one thing, but dogma that is involved in running the lives of others under the imaginary authority of a god, only to be lead by MEN, dictators of sorts, drag the rest of humanity and the planet downwards.
Keep your religion TO YOURSELF! It’s not to be involved in politics and the controlled pseudo morality being imposed on others. Of late, that mentality has whipped up the simple minded, convinced they are on ‘god’s side’ with these crazy Republican and Tea Party wackos! They do nothing but infect and destroy the fabric of progressive humanity!