Bethany Christian Services is a national antigay adoption chain that advertised (via Google ads) at Ex-Gay Watch until I banned them a couple weeks ago.
According to the Associated Press (via MSNBC), Bethany also allows a local Presbyterian-run office in Mississippi to discriminate against Catholics.
Are you sure this isn’t a Landover Baptist adoption agency?
Discriminate against Catholics? I would say that I’m surprised, but I’m not.
I was a sentient being during the 1960 presidential campaign, during which JFK was villified because he was a Roman Catholic. I was 10 years old at the time–an American Baptist–and did not understand the bases for him being villified. Some of my best friends were Catholics, and some of them are today. That is what largely turned me off to organized religion.
Many Evangelical Christians do not believe that Roman Catholicism is “true christianity,” especially fundamentalists, who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. Catholics follow church teaching as inerrant, and the Pope’s word as infallible. Understand that church teaching can change, but it takes years, sometimes centuries.
In this day and age of widespread literacy, it’s too easy to forget that except for the last 200 years or so, literacy was not widespread, so the common man (who couldn’t read) had to rely on the Catholic Church to interpret the Bible and/or God’s word, especially in countries where it was the ONLY church allowed.
Being born and raised as a Catholic and still periodically finding myself in agreement with the Church on some matters like poverty, etc., I find it interesting that very few individual Catholic parishes get involved antigay activities, at least in the Chicago area, where my experiences with the Catholic Church were.
Why does the Roman Catholic Church, Inc. (hierarchy) hate kids?
Cardinal: Children Of Gay Couples Cannot Be Baptized
(Ottawa) A Canadian cardinal who had been considered a possible successor to Pope John Paul says that the children of married same-sex couples cannot be baptized in the Catholic Church
https://www.365gay.com/newscon05/07/071505rcCanada.htm
Just so everyone is clear, this isn’t the mainline Presbyterian Church, this church is an affiliate of the Presbyterian Church of America. A domination based in Chattanooga, that among other things, prevents women from serving in the pulpit or congregationly-elected position of leadership.
Many Evangelical Christians do not believe that Roman Catholicism is “true christianity,” especially fundamentalists, who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible
Phil, just remember, more than a few conservative Protestant Christians (not all evangelicals are conservative) refer to the Roman Catholic Church as the Harlot Vatican, the Whore of Babylon. I am not joking.
I was 10 years old during the 1960 election campaign, and we attended a church of the American Baptist Convention. The anti-Catholic bigotry that was evident horrified me. And I’ve never paid any attention to organized religion since.
Yes, Raj, I did some googling on anti-Catholicism, and I too was pretty grossed out by what I saw. Growing up in a town that was 70% practicing Catholic, attending a Catholic college, and then residing in another town with a very large Catholic population (Chicago-area), I guess I’ve lived a sheltered life.
However, after moving to the rural South 3 years ago, my eyes were opened to how widespread this phenomenon is. Not a pretty picture, but then bigotry in any form is not pretty.
Oh yeah, so that explains a lot about me: A gay kid growing up Catholic, and a Catholic kid growing up in a predominantly Pentacostal county. I had it coming everywhere I looked! 🙂
Being raised as a good fundamentalist/Calvinist Christian, imagine my surprised when I discovered “Christianity” was historically rooted in ‘hell-bound’ Catholicism.
And then I found out that there was such as thing as Orthodox Christians! My mom explained that they were Catholic but without statues. Mom was/is a hoot. On nice summer days, when we had other plans (e.g. something more fun than going to Mass), she would drive to the church while Mass was going on and no one was in the narthex, pick up a parish bulletin, with us waiting in the car, and we’d take off for the beach, etc.
This way, if Grandma asked, we had “gone to church,” and Mom had a bulletin to prove it! And we hadn’t lied. We did, in fact, go to church, but we just didn’t go inside. Thank God neither of my parents took that mortal sin stuff too seriously!!
Phil, my (same sex) partner was raised in an orthodox (of sorts) church. A Ukrainian Catholic church. To hear him tell about the place, it was funny as heck. The choirmaster was trying to have sex with everyone who could move–male or female–who was in his or her teens. The choirmaster was married, with children, of course, but that didn’t dissuade him from trying to bang pretty bois or galls, most of whom were in their teens.
And after my partner’s father died, the paster, after having presided over his father’s funeral tried to hit on his widowed mother for sex. Right after the funeral. Funny as heck.
Note for mikea: no link, Personal experience.
Timothy at July 19, 2005 06:48 PM
Of course there are some (Alan Chambers for example) who appear to have sold their soul (literally) to the political religous zealots just for money, notoriety, and approval…
I’m going to get really mean, and I’ll probably be banned for it.
As far as I can tell, Chambers is an employee of an anti-equal-rights for-gay people-operation. He’s an actor playing a gig. I don’t know whether he has sex with the person he considers his spouse, and, frankly, I don’t care. If he has children with his own sperm, the issue doesn’t mean very much, since I could whack off into a cup and, via InVitroFertilization, have a child with a willing female (modern medicine is so wonderful). Merely having a child that is genetic doesn’t require having to have sex with the female. That should be obvious.
Chambers seems to be the anti-gay organization’s successor to John “Candi” Paulk (remember him?) who was caught prancing around a DC gay bar a few years ago. Where is Paulk nowadays? He seems to have been trottled off to Coventry.
…but I think most of the ex-gay ministers are sincere.
I neither know nor care whether they are “sincere.” I have stated here in the past and will state here once more that I have known people who have changed from straight to gay (and in this, I am using “lifestyle”) and who have changed from gay to straight, and who have changed from straight to gay to straight to gay again. And they did not have to pay religious zealots to accomplish that. They just did it.
Just do it. But, the question remains why just do it? To save your immortal soul? An ephemeral thing for which there is no–and has never been–any evidence? As far as I have ever been able to determine, it’s all blah, blah, blah. Stephen Bennet’s singing (which I’ve never heard) isn’t enhance by the fact that he claims to be “ex-gay.” I don’t have the slightest idea what Chambers’s claim to fame is (haven’t heard of him being a singer). Randy Thomas? What has he done except to the “praise the lord, I’m free of homosexualty” bit. I could go on and on. This rhetorical gay-bashing is nothing more than a cottage industry among some conservative christians to raise money from the rubes. And, the “ex-gay ministers” are part of that industry.