Please watch this brief video:
If you think that this mind-set is unique among many professing Christians in America, think again! This woman is by no means unique in her thinking, and in her absorption of the jingoistic and exclusionary rhetoric that emanates from all too many pulpits throughout the United States.
Yesterday, I attended a rally that supported Proposition 8 in California, that seeks to overturn the California Supreme Court decision handed down last May that ratifies the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in California. Many same-sex couples in California are now being married, and having their relationships recognized with all the dignity that accrues to heterosexual marriage. Indeed, last Saturday I was privileged to officiate at the marriage of a same-sex couple.
The rally was held on the grounds of a church, and there must have been approximately 300 people fervently supporting the passage of that discriminatory and mean-spirited Proposition. As those of us who oppose Proposition 8 were only made recently aware of that rally, there were only a handful of us carrying signs opposing that Proposition. Fortunately, two of our number were interviewed for the local news.
What is instructive about that rally affirming Proposition 8 was the fact that on those church grounds the first thing they did was to say the Pledge of Allegiance. They enmesh "Christianity" with Americanism, and ascribe to Christianity and to Jesus the false gospel of exclusion and discrimination whereby they think it is the Christian's right to discriminate against anyone as well as to seek to write discrimination into a Constitution; commit the sin of idolatry that is specifically condemnd in the Ten Commandments as well as in much of the rest of Scripture.
Two of the church's employees came and took our pictures and videotaped us for quite a long time. When one of our number asked why they were doing that, one said that it was because if there was any vandalism in their church they would know where to look.
They worship Americanism as represented in the Flag to which they pledge Allegiance, and I doubt very much that anyone quoted Jesus regarding their right to discriminate against anyone, simply because discrimination was diametrically opposed to Jesus life and message to those who would seek to follow Him.
Many fervently yelled; many carried signs, one of which was, "Keep California Straight." Clearly, Jesus was nowhere to be found!
Moreover, little children were also carrying signs and, as did the adults, repeatedly shouted, "Yes on 8." It struck me that parents taking children to such a rally was equivalent to child abuse. They were teaching discrimination and hate to their children, seeking to perpetuate it into the next generation. Indeed, it is very likely that many of these children didn't even know what they were saying and doing. Some were as young as about five years old.
We had better wake up as a country and realize that such displays, such rallies, such a mind-set as represented by the woman in the above video is not only not unusual, but seems to be quickly gaining ground in the United States.
Homophobia and racism partake of the same mind-set and it is very instructive that the latest polls show Obama to be only six percentage points ahead of McCain in the polls.
Here we have the worst President in memory; the worst economy since the Great Depression; we are enmeshed in an unjust and very unpopular war that we initiated, and the only viable alternative to this madness is only three percentage points ahead of the person who has long favored most of the status quo.
If Obama loses this election, it will be largely, if not solely, due to racism and the discriminatory mind-set in in America, and this woman's mind-set will have finally prevailed, dooming the United States to go from one madness to another, a war of all against all, until we finally destroy each other and ourselves.
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