Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1kOktuyAJU
Dear Independent Fundamental Baptists,
I first must preface this post with a disclaimer that I was raised in one of your churches. I am not some random person who was raised as a "hippie-liberal-outsider," who just stumbled across this video and decided to respond to it. I lived in your community under your rules for 18 years (18 years too long in my opinion) until I managed to get out of your oppressive community. While I could probably write an entire book on the IFB and their absurd teachings (I could spend chapters alone on your teaching of Proverbs 13:24), I will stick only to this particular sermon on sodomy. I'll try to time-stamp exact quotes on which I'm commenting.
Pastor Anderson starts off by introducing the topic of this clip by pointing out that there are only three passages that actually deal with "sodomites - homosexuals; queers; faggots!" (0:23) This is just the first of his many technical errors made in this discussion. The definition of sodomite is: one who engages in sexual intercourse involving anal or oral copulation. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are a lot of heterosexual couples out there who engage in anal and oral sex. In fact, I'd venture a guess that simply based on population percentages that there are more men have received blow jobs from women than from other men. So, really, your entire sermon just went out the window considering that you synonymously use homosexual and sodomite throughout the rest of your fundamentalist ideological rant. But, I'll humor you. Let's continue and see what else you have to say, shall we?
You go on to point out that "every homosexual in the Bible is a rapist or a molester - child molester - whatever you want to call it!" Well, gee! I guess you just about covered every case of queer sexual interaction that happened over the span of several hundred years in which the Bible was written with those three stories (which is actually what they are - stories - not proven facts with substantial evidence to support them; they wouldn't call it believing if the Bible were able to be proven to be true, after all). So, you've got us there: we are, indeed, all rapists and child molesters. Might as well start arresting all of us! Or, maybe you should just look around that room of "God's followers" you're preaching to - I'm sure a lot of them would know a thing or two about what those kinds of perverts think and do. You go on to say that "every single homosexual in the Bible was bisexual." (1:00) I suggest that you look up the definitions of "homosexual" and "bisexual," because you clearly don't know the meaning of either word.
Anderson's discussion on "sin nature" (about 1:30-3:30) is actually one of the most ridiculous pieces of preaching I've heard in a while. He tells his followers that it's their sinful nature to lust after the opposite gender, and that's actually okay since it's a "natural" sin. It's actually pretty acceptable, expected even, that men will drive by a billboard of a scantily clad female model (or, as Anderson puts it at 2:13, "that porno") and be tempted to look at it with lustful eyes. I know that within your churches this is considered acceptable due to the ability to pray for forgiveness upon recognizing that you've done wrong, but I'd be willing to put money behind my confidence that your followers are guilty of checking out attractive people of the opposite sex far more often than they acknowledge in their prayers.
Twice later in this sermon Anderson refers to the Biblical text-evidence "proving" that homosexuals are stupid (4:35 and 9:30). Well, I find this particularly ironic since he himself has already equated the three words "sodomite," "homosexual," and "bisexual," and also since he will go on to feel the need to define words such as "vile" and "reprobate." But you know, clearly you're just on a whole different level of intelligence from myself and the rest of the queers in the Ivy League. I mean, I certainly won't try to offend you by putting you up on our level. I wouldn't want to insult myself by doing that either, to be totally honest.
One question that I have for you, though, concerns the argument that you made about homosexuality being an "unnatural" sin. You argued that homosexuality actually is not part of the sin committed in the stories about sodomy (probably because sodomy is a different thing completely, but you're really not aware of that, I suppose). You argued that it is because it's not something that any person would naturally feel unless they were being punished by God (6:20). So, my question to you is, if it's only a sin that people who are so far from God commit, and if you and your followers are that close to God, then why do you even care about it? It's not something you should worry about if you truly believe that you're a "good Christian" by IFB standards, and you also believe that you're right about how God creates homosexuals by darkening the hearts of non-believers. Yet you continue to point out how "disgusting" homosexuality is (5:50). In my own life experience I've found that generally you don't call something disgusting unless you've got a reason to fear it. And you don't fear things that can't affect or touch you.
I now want to take a moment to highlight the mention you made of your grandmother's margin-notes in her Bible. I love that you read your grandmother's Bible almost as much as I love the fact that she has taken it upon herself to decide that AIDS - a disease that did not actually exist in the human race until long after the Bible was written - is God's magical solution to homosexuality (6:35). Clearly you did your homework on that one. Obviously God created HIV and AIDS exclusively to punish homosexuals. That's why it's also able to be transmitted through shared needles, giving First Aid without gloves to a carrier with open wounds, and (What's that other way I was thinking of? Oh, right!) childbirth. Gotta stop those damn newborn sodomites - who, by the way, according to you, are not born gay.... But - if they're not born queer, then why are they being burdened with God's perfect punishment for queers? You know, you might want to reconsider this whole stance.
I found your commentary from about 8:00 onward to be both incredibly ironic and really quite upsetting. I found it to be upsetting because your hate speeches had me convinced that I was nothing but trash for years. I spent the better part of my adolescent and young adult life loathing myself for being who I am. However, I also find it really, really ironic (in the driest possible way). You go around preaching about how Godly and Christ-like you are. You consider your followers to be the only ones doing religion right. And yet I happen to know that if your followers' lives behind closed doors were exposed to a public eye, a lot of them would end up arrested and doing hard time, if not worse. I know some "animals who would violate innocent people" (8:10) that sit in your pews several times a week. So, tell me: who are the "stupid animals who need to be taken and destroyed" (9:30), when you really think about it? Because you might want to look in a mirror before answering that question.
Sincerely,
Bee
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