It Is Enough: An Open Letter to the Sick at Heart [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

It Is Enough: An Open Letter to the Sick at Heart
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Wednersday 09 May 2012

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

A holy man stands before his flock and says, "Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male."

And then the pastor says, "And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you rein her in. And you say, 'Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl, and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.'"

But here's the funny part: after that Pastor gets called out for his psychotic, virulent, hateful rhetoric, he says, "I was using hyperbole in an effort to communicate the importance of the gender distinctions that God created. In the context of the scripture, Mark, chapter 9, Jesus conjures up violent images as well, when he says, 'If your hand is causing you to sin, cut it off.' He's not speaking literally. He's speaking figuratively, using hyperbole to convey the importance of the offense."

Get it?

Beat your fag boys, your butch girls, beat them into line in the name of God...but if you get caught doing it (or espousing it), wave it off as 'hyperbole,' quote holy Scripture to defend yourself, and compare yourself to Jesus...and be sure to make it a non-apology apology by using phrases like "the importance of the offense," i.e. it is the limp-wrist son and the butch daughter who are actually offensive, and not the exhortation - delivered in church, mind you - to beat them because of who they are.

That happened in America not two weeks ago, and if you're fool enough to think the incident was a one-off, a fluke, an aberration, then all I can say to you, sir or ma'am, is good luck to you, good night, go back to sleep, and don't bother reading on from here.

The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9016-it-is-enough-an-open-letter-to-the-sick-at-heart