Texas Baptists demonstrate the love and mercy of their god.
As soon as the Dallas church completed its vote, the Baptist General Convention of Texas started proceedings to kick the church out of the denominational body. “All Texas Baptists are loving, respectful and welcoming to all people. But while we are welcoming, we are not affirming,” said a spokesman for the denominational association, which often goes by the name Texas Baptists.
That last sentence, just wtf? What in the fuck kind of psychological sleight of hand did someone pull to make you believe there's width down which to split that hair? Oh yeah, so here's what this congregation did that was so fucking awful.
The youth would want to marry a man. And in that moment, as in other moments in recent years, Mason realized something that would have shocked him when he started out as a pastor 37 years ago: He would want to officiate at that gay wedding.
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Now, after putting the issue to a contentious popular vote that has torn his congregation, Mason, 60, can do just that. Wilshire Baptist Church voted 577 to 367 to welcome LGBT people as full participants in every aspect of the church — as members, as lay leaders, as potential clergy, and yes, as brides and grooms.
Hmm, how did the pastor come to this decision?
“It became increasingly difficult for me to justify, as I kept looking in the eyes of people that I loved and seeing the presence of Christ in them, and as I honestly looked at the Scripture and realized that it was not as clear as I thought it was,” Mason said. Those passages that say homosexuality is sinful? As Mason read them again, over the course of months of study with his congregants, he came to see them as narrower condemnation of abusive sexual practices of biblical times, not condemnation of loving homosexual relationships.
Holy shit. You mean he actually read the bible and interpreted the words on his own without someone of higher office standing over his shoulder telling him what to think? Fucking blasphemy.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."