'Tis a Mystery (as Father Duffy would say)

    'Tis a Mystery (as Father Duffy would say)

I watched once more the video of the born again clod attempting to crash the love-in at Pulse the other day, holding a homophobic hate speech sign. He was gently, but forcibly removed and all the while he pewled something along the line of "Why aren't Christians allowed here?"

In the first place, there were Christians, Jews and others peacefully gathered there, some of whom are friends, but that's irrelevant. The question should be how anyone actually believing themself to be "Christian" in any rationally defined sense of the word, could be antagonistic toward the proceedings at Pulse in the first place.

There are many people who loudly and proudly proclaim their belief in God and many of those also claim that they believe Yeshua bar Josef ("Jesus" in Latin) was his actual offspring and what he (Jesus ) allegedly said and did while here in a corporeal sense, per the synoptic gospels, was directive in nature for his followers.

Now I'm relatively certain that this yahoo at Pulse would vigorously agree up to this point, as would several devout people with whom I had professional acquaintances at various times. One was searching for meaning following a too soon death in the family, the other dealing with the double whammy of questioning their own sexuality while trying to reconcile that to being a self proclaimed Evangelical. Tough, huh? One actually used to attempt to gloss over their internal contradictions by saying "Love the sinner, hate the sin" which is but one of many trite and irrelevant rote phrases which I presume they teach in Sunday School at First (your denomination here) Church.

So what exactly did Jesus imply regarding sexuality in what we can probably generally agree is all recognized translations of the New Testament? Nuthin'. But..... no, Nuthin! If one is actually attempting to be an observant Christian as defined by the guy in charge, then there are only two simple rules. From his own alleged quotes, all that other stuff is wiped away by the new covenant, so have some bacon with those pancakes! Love your God, Love your neighbor. Period. Note there is no mention beyond that of gender, race, sexual preference...!

Now I'm gonna go out on a limb here and propose that if Jesus as he is limned by the three synoptic writers were real, alive today and in Orlando, we can say with relative certainty which side of the line he'd have been on. In fact, the mean spirited, misogynistic, homophobic faux Christianity preached by the Pat Robertsons and their ilk stem from the apostle Paul, another conflicted soul who actually hijacked the Jesus version and made his version into quite another thing. In a real sense Paul created Christianity as his own brainchild, citing Jesus as the source but ignoring the inherent inclusive, "love one another", vibe. It was further institutionalized by several Church Councils which decided, among other things, that some writings were scripture, others not so much.

By 367, those scriptural writings in which the "princes of the Church" (men) consolidated male dominance, power, and dogma were the official Biblical canon. These writings excluded any writings, such as the gospel of Peter or the gospel of Mary Magdalen which proposed alternate concepts of who Jesus was, women's place in the Church, who was "The Apostle Jesus loved," etc, etc.

Power was good, in the 4th century (and far beyond), and if you couldn't arrange to get born into royalty, becoming a priest was a damned good alternative. Organized Christianity, as "The Church" soon became the hammer with which sovereigns controlled the masses, and priests benefitted immensely because of it. It was true among Hebrews before the supposed time of Jesus, and soon became as deeply imbedded in Christian nations afterward, even to the point of Bishops having automatic seats in the British Parliament and being executors of the Royal will in most of Western Europe. All were concerned primarily with power, control and preservation of privilege and precious little more beyond that,

Those who would invoke Old Testament teachings to scorn any lifestyle other than their own, are the worst kind of hypocrites, because they act exactly as did the Pharisees who are alleged to have cried for Jesus' death. If one desires to embrace Old Testament rules, then start by not ordering the ribs and shrimp combo at Sonny's. While you're at it stop trying to check out the server's butt. Only if you follow all of the more than 600 "laws " cited in the OT as ordained by the sky magus, then, and only then, can we at least acknowledge that you are objecting to non traditional relationships based on deeply held religious beliefs dictated by scriptural teaching instead of being what you really are, simply moronic, bigoted, homophobic assholes.