Signs of the End Times
Today the signs of the end time — for me, that would be the end to popular support for institutionalized homophobia in the US — are rife and reports are falling in front of me almost faster than I can keep track of them. Just to set the stage, this happens for me against a background where, here in Maryland, the professional haters appear to have enough petition signature to put Maryland's duly enacted marriage-equality law to a popular vote this fall, but where recent polls show a sudden surge in support for marriage equality, an effect that's apparently due to recent, significant statements of support from the NAACP and President Obama.
This seems to be making churches, some nondenominational, generic "Christian" churches, some very mainstream, nervous, and their nerves lead them to step up the stridency of their ridiculous–and increasingly ridiculed–anti-gay rhetoric.
But first, this headline from the Washington Post: "Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite". Now, as I understand it, Pentecostals like Mr. Wolford, profiled here post mortem, handle their snakes confident that their god will protect them from bites thanks to the unshakable strength of their faith or, if they do get bitten, he will smite the poison from their bodies. It didn't work this time for Mr. Wolford. To my mind this is a pretty clear sign whether one believes in a god or not.
And here's some trouble for the more mainstream Catholic Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York and recently serving as the highest profile anti-gay hater of the Catholic Church: it seems that when he was Archbishop in Milwaukee he paid off some pedophile priests, some to the tune of $20,000, to leave the church quietly:
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee.
[Laurie Goodstein, "In Milwaukee Post, Cardinal Authorized Paying Abusers", New York Times, 30 May 2012.]
To my mind, this too is a pretty clear sign whether one believe in a god or not, with the further note that fervent belief in a god doesn't seem to be helping these guys much.
Then there has been the rash of new pastor contestants in that unofficial reality game "America's Got Hate".
You'll remember the "pastor" in North Carolina who felt that gays and lesbians should be rounded up and "put behind electric fences" until we died off from being unable to reproduce (he obviously didn't pay attention during that biology lesson); he's being defended by his congregation and himself remains unrepentant. Oh, there's the competitor in Kansas who announced from his pulpit that the government should be putting GLBT people to death, but probably wouldn't. He's gone the route of issuing "clarifications" that only make his case worse. (More here.)
But they're old news. This week's phenomenon was the viral video of the 4-year-old boy singing "Ain't No Homos Gonna Make it to Heaven" (I haven't watched the video and I won't link to it–y'all know how to use the google if you want to) while his "pastor" and the congregation of that little Indiana church cheered him on. Hallelujah! All they're trying to do is witness for the truth and the "pastor" says they've only been getting "death threats" for their trouble.
Shall we talk about bearing false witness?
An Indiana sheriff is disputing reports that a local pastor has received death threats over a viral video of his congregation cheering a young boy as he sang: "Ain't no homo gonna make it to heaven."
“To my knowledge, there are no death threats at this time,” Decatur County Sheriff Gregory Allen told FoxNews.com. He was responding to a report on TMZ.com that Jeff Sangl, pastor of Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Ind., had received death threats after the video hit the Internet Wednesday.
[Joshua Rhett Miller, "Indiana sheriff denies report that pastor got death threats over anti-gay video", Fox News, 31 May 2012.]
Just to add a bit of sparkle to the end-times feeling, one notes that the story quoted above is from Fox "News".
And in positive news, just in today is word that the Federal Appeals Court in Boston has declared part of the odious DOMA unconstitutional:
Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act — the federal definition of "marriage" and "spouse" is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled today. The decision by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. United States, is the first instance of a federal appellate court striking down any portion of the 1996 law.
[Chris Geidner, "BREAKING: DOMA's Federal Definition of Marriage Unconstitutional, Federal Appeals Court Rules", Metro Weekly, 31 May 2012.]
I haven't read the decision yet, but indications are that it is strongly wrought.
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Saturday, 3 November 2012 at 09.23
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Someday Sharia will be here and end all this foolishness of snake handling and bad laws.