If I had a hammer. -- or Comic Con picketed

[seryn]

That group of Kansan religious assholes is going to be in San Diego picketing ComicCon.

See: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/07/09/fred-phelps-westboro-baptist-church-headed-to-comic-con/

for my favorite comment, " "My god has a hammer." "

And: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/07/09/westboro-baptist-church-to-picket-san-diego-comic-con/

for the closing paragraph by the author: "You know what San Diego? As a committed Christian deeply offended by these morons…" Lo! Harken unto the one Christian I've seen publicly decrying Phelps.

Normally, in my experience, Christians tell me it's "not their place" to tell other Christians how to believe or behave. It left me with the impression that only non-Christians had any sense of human decency. So this really was a surprise.

I have had Christians tell me that if I picket Phelps's funeral then I am more of a monster than he is because, "[I] should know better." So they do know how to speak against people, just their common beliefs prevent them from decrying Phelps.

ETA on July 16, 2010 3:30pm : ps. No one has commented, but 28bytes read this and put up a poll on LJ (even though there is 28bytes).

Apparently the experience I have had with Christians defending Phelps over their own friends is rare enough to be shocking to other people.

Comments

[28bytes]

Apparently the experience I have had with Christians defending Phelps over their own friends is rare enough to be shocking to other people.

Yes. Either I've been lucky in which Christians I come in contact with, or you've been unlucky, or both.

[seryn]

One of my friends actually says I have the worst luck in public situations she's ever heard of anyone having. That was pretty much true. Now that I go out more, my average luck has improved. Minimizing my exposure to the outside world did not drop the number of bad experiences, it actually meant I was nearing a 100% negative experience average.

It's been my experience that if someone comes right out and says they're Christian, they're only doing so because they want to say something downright evil. It's akin to "No offense but...". The only time someone says that is when they're going to say something offensive and want you to know that they know better. The rest of the time Christians are completely silent about their faith.

When I was a child growing up in the suburban midwest, pretty much everyone was some variant of Christian. No one talked about it except in the guise of whether they could play. Catholics had Wednesday after-school classes. One group offered Saturday services. And all the practicing families were gone on Sundays. It wasn't something that came up because there wasn't anyone, "One of these things is not like the others." It was presumed that you shared the same beliefs as everyone else, so no one talked about it.

That seems to be what happens now. Except with the assholes.

And now, I see it differently. I see it as exclusionary, the way I grew up, because people who weren't Christian didn't belong, they weren't like the others. Now I see the silence in the face of actual evil perpetuated under an umbrella designation as tacit approval of those actions.

But what I hear when I ask specific Christian people is, "If someone acknowledges Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, who am I to say they are not Christian enough?" No one had ever said, "I'm a Christian, but I don't believe Christians should spread hatred like those people. They're wrong and I don't really see how that's Christian of them."

[28bytes]

"If someone acknowledges Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, who am I to say they are not Christian enough?"

Next time you're asked that, follow it up with "do you think Obama is a good Christian?" If the e-mail forwards I get are any indication, you'll get to enjoy some serious backpedaling.

[seryn]

Uh huh.

Although the same silent Christians who actually think the Phelps guy is foul don't think too horribly of Obama, generally. It's the outspoken people who make it seem like the umbrella only shelters assholes.

There have to be some church leaders out there who have the photogeneity and connections to get on television who could actually speak out against Phelps. There are people who are paid to represent God on Earth and none of them speak out against hatemongering done in their collective names. There are no NYT editorials. There aren't any public meetings decrying it. Here there are even preachers who open their churches in order to give people space to foment race riots and who come on local television to invite people to monger hate within their walls.

I, personally, think Obama is pretty average for a Christian. He lies, he cheats, he steals, he hurts people when he could do otherwise, and then he blames it all on a nebulous man in the sky. If he wasn't a Christian he'd probably wouldn't be doing all those things because he wouldn't have gotten elected. But he's not hugely demonstrative of his faith, so if he'd been elected as a non-Christian, he'd be doing the same things without blaming the nebulous man in the sky. The people who say Obama is a bad Christian actually mean he's not hatemongering enough. It's hard to even talk to them.

The building management where I live is very devoutly Christian and they say things like that and they watch Fox News. They actually tell me how "even handed" the news there is. I tell them I watch the US News from foreign programs to avoid bias and that confuses them enough that I can escape without needing to scrape the mental sludge off the inside of my skull.

But what's weird to me is all the stuff they don't like Obama doing... it has all been stuff that hasn't happened or happened despite Obama's fighting against it. The Defense of Marriage Act being overturned... Obama's administration sent their best lawyers and argued the farthest rightest extreme in order to keep it from getting overturned. Obama closing Guantanamo hasn't happened. Obama ending the wars? hasn't happened. Obama helping some people who were previously disenfranchised? Louisiana says no. The news media who have been banned from getting within 300 feet (it was reduced to 65 feet later) of anything with oil on it in Gulf of Mexico definitely don't see this as an "open and transparent" administration. I'm not really sure what the Christians' problem with Obama actually is.