During a Springfield (Missouri) City Council public hearing in August on amending the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity protections, Rev. Phil Snider of the Brentwood Christian Church lashed out at the council for “inviting the judgement of God upon our land” by making “special rights for gays and lesbians.”
Watch for yourself.
Actually, I think the minister is ON the side of gay rights. He starts out saying he’s FOR the ordinance change, and then reads the passages, and then makes the point that the same arguments were made for segregation by religious leaders. Or, am I missing something?
Zach, just wondering if you’ve come around to support equality for polygamy yet? Would the Springfield ordinance protect them?
You see, there’s far more discrimination against polygamy because it’s actually prosecuted as a crime. Those people actually go to prison just for loving who they want to love. I wonder why Hollywood and the media don’t use their bully pulpit to come out and support that group of folks more. Where’s the Oreo cookie ad in their honor? I wonder if President Obama’s position is evolving on polygamy like it was gay marriage?
We’re not talking about plural marriage here; we’re talking about allowing two people who love each other to get married the same as anyone else.
Look, if you support inequality, then so be it, but I believe in the idea that “all men are created equal.”
I could barely hear the video due to the clanging noise from those steel balls of his.
Rick, you are absolutely correct. This preacher did a wonderful illustration of how the bible has been twiated in the past to deny the rights of others. It was skillfully delivered. I tip my hat to him.
Thanks John T. (that was my Dad’s nickname, John Thomas and his last name 🙂 It was great to have the confirmation that I heard it right. The pastor did a masterful job, but sometimes irony and understatement can be misinterpreted. I know from experience. I am however, disappointed, I thought twiated was a word new to me, and tried to look it up on Urban Dictionary. I think it was a typo for twisted, but I still like it. Kinda like Kathy Griffin’s term for her tweets in the past tense.
Pastor Rick Snider is actually arguing on the side of gay rights…or at least, is asking people to rethink their position. As he says in his speech, he simply took the arguments “good Christians” raised in their objections to integration in the Civil Rights Era, and applied them to today’s arguments on gays.
Perhaps Christians ought to be very careful at how they claim what “the Bible says” to promote their positions on matters. Jesus has not one word on homosexuality, but he has lots of words about loving one another, about caring for the poor and the sick (the phrase “the poor you have always with you”, for example when he is anointed by the woman who brought oil, is not a simple statement of fact, but a condemnation of people who callously let the poor live with no help.) Perhaps we ought to go to work on those things that he tells us to do, before we find issues to divide ourselves. Matt 25, as well as the sermon on the Mount are both key passages in my daily prayer and meditation. I would encourage others to use these passages from time to time…
Pr Chris