UPDATE: WBIR television reports this morining that, by a vote of 10-5, the County commission refused to consider the entire agenda, so the “Save Us, God” resolution was tabled. (Be sure to watch the news video at the site showing the supporters of the Tennessee Equality Project). But chairperson Karen Miller vows to reintroduce the resolution.
____________________
“You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.”
–Jim Morrison, “The Soft Parade”
I’m not sure how many more posts I’ll do pointing out the kind of inane behaviors prompted by religion in the American South, for by now we all know of many: prayers at football games, Ten Commandments monuments on courthouse lawns, invocations of God’s mercy for saving lives during a tornado (while failing to blame Him for the deaths), and so on. But this one takes the cake, for it’s a serious throwback to the days of the Old Testament.
From The Raw Story (and confirmed by CNN and Liberal America), we hear that the Board of Commissioners of Blount County, Tennessee, considered an unusual item of business at their meeting on Tuesday (yesterday). Here’s the meeting’s agenda; have a close look at item 7:
“Petitioning God’s mercy”? Yes, what we have in that item is a resolution sponsored by board chairperson Karen Miller—a reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage. The resolution condemns the court ruling as immoral and anti-Biblical, and, bizarrely, asks God to spare that Bible-loving county when, as is inevitable, He visits His wrath upon those who dare allow people of one sex to marry others of the same sex.
It’s no surprise that Southerners often object strongly to same-sex marriage (remember the “conscientious objector” Kim Davis?), but it’s a throwback to the Bronze Age for modern Americans to importune God to spare their land from retribution. But they did indeed ask; quotes below are from The Raw Story, but emphasis is mine.
The resolution begins: “Whereas, the Governor, Attorney General, and ALL WE Blount County Legislators have sworn an oath consistent with the moral Law of God (“So Help Me God”) to uphold the Constitution of Tennessee and the Constitution of the United States; and Whereas, the fulfillment of this oath, in the American tradition, may not be read to contradict the written Constitution, Justice, Reason and higher Natural Law…” before turning to Commissioner Miller’s grievances.
“Federal judges have once again usurped powers not delegated to them, and have violated Reason, the Rule of Law and Natural Law by purporting to strike down State laws and acts of the People recognizing and protecting Natural Marriage,” it states by way of explaining that Miller believes the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds by legalizing same-sex marriage. [JAC: Clearly the real Power was delegated to God.]
Miller’s resolution calls upon “all of the Officers of the State of Tennessee, the Governor, the Attorney General, and the members of the Tennessee Legislature,” to join the commission in saving “natural marriage,” and defending “the the Moral Standards of Tennessee.”
. . . “We the Blount County Legislature call upon all of the Officers of the State of Tennessee, the Governor, the Attorney General, and the members of the Tennessee Legislature, to join us, and utilize all authority within their power to protect Natural Marriage, from lawless court opinions.”
. . . “WE adopt this Resolution before God that He pass us by in His Coming Wrath and not destroy our County as He did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities. As the Passover Lamb was a means of salvation to the ancient Children of Israel, so we stand upon the safety of the Lamb of God to save us, ” the resolution reads. “WE adopt this Resolution begging His favor in light of the fact that we have been forced to comply and recognize that the State of Tennessee, like so many other God-fearing States, MAY have fallen prey to a lawless judiciary in legalizing what God and the Bible expressly forbids.”
It need hardly be mentioned that such resolutions, by breaching the wall between religion and government, are violations of the Constitution’s First Amendment.
There are of course some sane people in Tennessee, and The Daily Times, the Blount County local paper, reports some pushback in its long article on the resolutiion:
Ginny West Case, a retired Christian educator in the United Methodist Church, said the God of Miller’s resolution doesn’t sound like the God she knows.
“That is not a primary characteristic of the God I know and love,” she said. “I’m tired of God being used as a battering ram. The Bible, over and over, tells us God is the God of love and grace and mercy.”
Well, I’ll take that as a sign of empathy, but Ms. West is still cherry-picking the Bible to find her good God. Other places in Scripture show God as genocidal, solipsistic, and bigoted. Better to appeal to human decency than the Old Testament!
You’ll be amused to see what local Biblical scholars said when the Times contacted them about the Sodom and Gomorrah angle. Like Ms. Case, they manage to interpret the story so it’s not a punishment for homosexuality. That story is, in part, given in Genesis 19:4-5 (King James Version). There Lot proffers his hospitality to three visitors to the city, but the locals demand that the visitors be brought out so they can have anally rape them. Lot refuses and offers his daughters as a carnal substitute.
Now before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both old and young, all the people from every quarter, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may know them carnally.”
6 So Lot went out to them through the doorway, shut the door behind him, 7 and said, “Please, my brethren, do not do so wickedly! 8 See now, I have two daughters who have not known a man; please, let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you wish; only do nothing to these men, since this is the reason they have come under the shadow of my roof.”
Now one can indeed question whether God destroyed city for lack of proper hospitality or for the citizens’ misguided carnality (would God have destroyed the city if the crowd had accepted Lot’s daughters?). Indeed, Ezekiel 16:49 says this:
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
But since the whole thing is made up anyway, why bother to argue about the “proper” interpretation of the story? That’s like arguing with young-earth creationists about the “proper” interpretation of Genesis. After all, one could make a good case that Lot himself should have been smitten along with everyone else. This kind of witless parsing is what inevitably ensues if you try to justify morality on Biblical grounds.
h/t: Jonathan
Dear Donald Trump. Want to build a wall? start here.
🙂
It could be a prototype, but with an intention of keeping everyone in. 😉
Non-stop mocking laughter seems the most appropriate response.
Agreed.
Stopping the laughter and finger-pointing (briefly) does have the benefit of allowing the additional impact of starting to laugh (and point fingers) again.
People can tune out continual derisive laughter a bit too easily. re-starting regularly hurts the recipients more.
Oh good grief! If one thinks that to being allowed to be mean to gay people is tyranny, I kind of think one is probably a massive idiot.
It really is amazing to see in real life how prejudices empowered by religious beliefs can result in people behaving so unethically, even when embedded in a much larger society that provides a sharp contrast that really makes the disgusting behavior stand out, and convince themselves that not only is their disgusting behavior righteous but that they are the ones who are victims of injustice!
Not surprising given some moderate life experience and general knowledge of human history, but still kind of amazing to see it in real life.
Maybe lamb’s blood on the lintels would work in Tennessee. It worked once before.
Ask me how happy I am that my kid lives in Tennessee.
We’re not all like that.
I just think it’s interesting that they believe enough to make this absurd petition, but not enough to, say, go to jail in defiance of the court. I guess superstition has it’s limits.
It is classic bullying tactics. They bloviate about issues but most turn away when it counts. Kim Davis is actually not one of these. Her ignorance and brainwashing goes throughout.
This woman needs to be institutionalized until she learns comprehension of reality.
She even got 4 others to vote with her – so sad.
No, she’s probably as sane as you or me. Her ideology is messed up. And this particular ideology is a popular part of the culture.
You don’t fix messed-up ideology by institutionalizing people who have bought into it. It’s unethical and it doesn’t work.
This I can live with on my conscience. Well, until I use some Cillet Bang! on it.
Ah, dang. Rude words. Are you sure it doesn’t work? Or do we have to fall back on blunt force trauma again?
Readers from other parts of the world might now understand why separation of church and state is just about impossible in this U.S.A.
They might also ask how do you determine the sane from the insane when passing out gun ownership rights. Just call it armed and dangerous, as our founders intended.
Well, to be fair, the US has greater separation of church of and state than any other country. Here in Germany the church is allowed to force you, pretty much by default if you’ve been baptized (even overseas!) to pay a 5-8% tax. To be honest, I think that calms them, because we don’t have anything like the crazy stuff you guys have to put up with from these people.
Also, this particular case isn’t so much about separation of church and state, as separation of God Himself and state!
This is so bizarre I’m struggling to believe it’s real, and happened in a country that considers itself the world’s leader. It’s like an ‘Onion’ article has taken on a life of its own, like that time when ‘War of the Worlds’ was first broadcast.
Try reading ‘Inspire,’ AQAP’s magazine. They think natural disasters in the US are signs of Allah’s wrath too.
These people must hate themselves so much to have such a strong need to prey on others like this. If I was a woo person I could imagine black auras twisting around them like snakes or something equally screwy. This is seriously disturbed and disturbing.
My first thought when I encounter this sort of thing is that people who think like this may have had seriously disfunctional childhoods or homelives. These sound like pleas being made to an abuser.
“Don’t hit me, hit my brother. I told him not to touch the stereo. Ow. I deserve to be hit, I know I do, but I tried to stop him. Ow. That’s okay, you’re right. Yes, you’ve got the right to hit me, but I couldn’t stop him. Ow. Thank you. Please. Please. Not me. Him.”
It’s a different issue and on a different scale, but this is supposed to be normal.
I agree. I often wonder what goes on in the heads of people like this. The thinking is so seriously warped, it has to have come from childhood indoctrination.
I’d feel sorry for them if it wasn’t for all the damage they do. There’s a reason the suicide rate for LGBT people is so high.
A little bird is telling me that the Orson Wells broadcast (about 1938?) wasn’t a first broadcast, and possibly not even a first broadcast in America. The story was the thick end of 40 years old by that point, and radio broadcasts well over a decade old.
It was really a tribute to Wells’ theatrical skills.
Thanks – I should have checked the details before posting. 🙂
I plead ignorance on the finer points of Biblical incantation, but I do not recall that the Bible specifically forbids the ceremony and state sanction of gay marriage. I thought it only forbids or otherwise speaks against gay sex.
The Bible forbids many things that are legal in the great state of Tennessee: lying, gluttony, fornication, adultery, failing to give to the poor, and on and on. The good citizens of that state have no problem with the legality of these sins, presumably because these sins are commonplace and performed by people they like. No, they only care about the sins of a persecuted minority.
It’s sad and pathetic, really, and very very very self centered and narcissistic.
That is why Donald Trump resonates with these people. He is just like them.
Especially on the narcissistic point. A textbook example, imo.
The textbook being the “How Not To” of hair pieces?
“Toupees for Dummies”?
Trump is the least Christian in terms of proclaimed faith, but the one of all the Republicans who looks most like he just walked in out of the Old Testament.
What Trump most resembles, to my eyes, particularly when he is speaking passionately and tenses his open lips, showing his incisors, is a large and vicious rodent. The hair helps, too.
Cherry-picking, the socially acceptable sin of the self-ghettoized majority.
Can I change just one word and resubmit the petition?
7. Resolution concerning greed and petitioning god’s mercy.
“That is not a primary characteristic of the God I know and love”
Ah, the incessant debate over the attributes of God. I have a suspicion that the reason Christians vocally advertise their opinions in this public way is a version of Pascal’s Wager, that when Judgement Day arrives and God pulls out the Naughty/Nice List on his iPad, these believers can provide evidence of how good a Christian they were.
Kim Davis (to God): ‘I did just like you said in the Bible–marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman.’ [God: 3 divorces? seriously?]
Karen Miller (to God): ‘I sponsored a resolution beseeching your mercy because gay marriage ain’t natural and was enacted by a lawless judiciary.’ [God: The US Bible belt can’t withstand Tennessee’s morbid obesity]
Ginny West Case (to God): ‘I bravely challenged my fellow Christians who were using your name to promote hatred against good people.’ [God: Admirable but confused. Her fellow Christians actually read the book]
Good point.
The interesting question to Ms Case is whether it would be okay if it turned out that homophobia IS a primary characteristic of the God she knew. Would she now agree that homophobia is no longer hateful, but loving and just? Or would she simply agree to love God anyway, warts and all?
If it’s not logically possible for God to disapprove of gay marriage, then the God Case knows is the God she invents.
If these people think what they are dealing with is tyranny, then they really do need to pick up a history book, or perhaps even a copy of an international newspaper.
You should file this story under Comic Relief. Sure, large stretches of the American South are god besotted but it’s not nearly as bad as you think it is and it’s getting better all the time. These folks are loud but the fact they couldn’t get the resolution passed in their own county should tell you much.
“couldn’t get the resolution passed in their own county.”
But sometimes they do and not just in the South.
It’s probably a good sign that the resolution was tabled. It indicates that the majority of the county board does not wish to see itself and their county embarrassed and subjected to worldwide ridicule. Of course, it is a never ending battle to keep the crazies confined to their padded cells, i.e. fundamentalist churches, since they are always in a frenzy to impose their lunatic notions on others.
So, what would be the penalty if the other Commissioners called her an idiot in public?
“the locals demand that the visitors be brought out so they can have anally rape them. ”
You know, this seems very implausible. It doesn’t even happen in San Francisco.
75 miles, and apparently no time, from the Dayton, home of the Scopes monkey trial.
I was born in an adjacent county. I do not now live in Tennessee now. (However, I live in North Carolina, and I don’t know that there’s a dime’s worth of difference between the two. I perceive that they try to out-bloviate and out-self-regard each other.)
Ugh! My state touches Tennessee!
As for Lot – he’s supposed to be the one “good” person, isn’t he? How do the christians excuse his intended sacrificing of his daughters?
Females don’t count. Good thing he had no sons. Nothing to offer the nice people. But if those people intended to have sex with the strangers then wouldn’t they have to be stoned?
It’s funny how OT rules and obligations get dismissed as having been superseded by NT teachings (not eating shell fish, selling daughters into slavery, not wearing mixed cloths etc) when considered convenient, but homophobic bigotry is somehow excused this.
In any event, has it not occurred to this bunch of elected officials that, given all the prayers offered to god nationally, perhaps he actually favoured gay marriage and influenced the Supreme Court accordingly. (Well if they get to talk rubbish then do do I!).
A whole lot of goofiness is what we have here.
I stand by Jim Morrison when he says on “Soft Parade”
You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!
Sorry for the repeat…I didn’t see that you already quoted this. Facepalm…
“People are strange” is also appropriate!
“There are of course some sane people in Tennessee, … Ginny West Case, a retired Christian educator in the United Methodist Church, said the God of Miller’s resolution doesn’t sound like the God she knows.”
Wait, I thought you said there were some sane people in TN? Why did you then illustrate this by quoting someone who believes in a wish-granting Sky Fairy?
I think God will be furious that He only made the agenda as Point 7, after highway maintenance and insurance and that kind of thing.
My prediction is that He will do what He did to the Egyptians and send a plague of frogs. (Exodus 8)
🙂
When I lived in Australia, if I didn’t shut my bathroom door properly it would fill up with cane toads. I can understand Pharaoh’s annoyance!
The cutest plague.
Frog Plague
I’ve never figured out why there are no movie depictions of it…
The various viewpoints:
Right wing Christians: “Yeh right on Lord, made those Egyptians suffer!”
Right wing Jews: “Well, God tried negotiating but it didn’t work, so He had no other choice…”
Mainstream Christians: “Hmmm, I think we can skip this bit.”
Karen Armstrong: “This haunting symbol of the frogs has been echoed throughout the ages, with the frog prince who simply needs to be loved.”
Reza Aslan: “Sam Harris said the Egyptians should choke to death on the frogs.. or at least that’s implicit in his neo-con Weltanschauung.”
Normal people: “I hope none of the frogs got hurt…”
God: Ribbit!
If god was going to pour out his wrath on Tennessee, he would have already done so for the repugnant, barbaric act of slavery. Oh, I forgot, god is okay with slavery. Leviticus 25:44-46. Ephesians 6:5-9.
“Well, I’ll take that as a sign of empathy, but Ms. West is still cherry-picking the Bible to find her good God. Other places in Scripture show God as genocidal, solipsistic, and bigoted.”
And pretty selfish.
There is 6 chapters in the bible (Exodus 25-30) that describe in (boring) details what and how to make an appriate offering to God. The istruction is (supposedly) given by God itself:
“Exodus 25:
1. And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying,
2 “Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring Me an offering. From every man who giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take My offering. […]”
Perhaps if Ms. West try to follow these divine directives before resubmitting her resolution, the chances of its adoption would be better?
In my opinion, these passages denote the strange sense of value of the biblical god: six chapters dedicated to how adulating himself in strong contrast with, for example, the two that describe superficially the creation of the world.
“…the strange sense of value of the biblical god: six chapters dedicated to…adulating himself…”
And 40% of the Decalogue.
Oh man that’s depressing.
We are looking into various universities/colleges that offer golf scholarships for my son, and one is in Tennessee.
Of course it is God-soaked, and some courses on “Christian thought” (or whatever) are mandated.
If it ever comes to pass my son attends such a place I’m torn somewhat between the free thinking “My children should make up their own minds about religion” and a “there’s no way those bastards are going to convert MY kid” impulse.
I’ll just have to inoculate him against bad reasoning as best I can.
My daughter chose to go to a Catholic High School (she had friends there). She came out a stronger atheist than ever. And for the duration she gave several of the teachers a run for their money.
We can apply some secular history about the interpretation of this story.
The first person to identify the specific sin of Sodom as being homosexuality and to use the term “sodomy” was 6th century Roman Emperor Justinian I, although a handful of writers before him kind of incidentally attributed gay relations to the inhabitants of Sodom.
Justinian also attributed “famines, earthquakes, and pestilences” to such crimes.
His views were forgotten until the middle of the 9th century until revived in the “Holy Roman Empire”, by Benedict the Levite. It took more centuries before his demand for capital punishment for gays would be accepted. Benedict thought you had to protect Christendom from divine punishment, but the prevailing mood in the 9th century was Christian forgiveness. In the 12h century, homosexuality started being linked to witchcraft and heresy and the big guns (or burning stakes came out).
Ironically, the New Testament epistle to Jude said the sin of Sodom was “lusting after strange flesh”, the “strange” having in past times been taken to refer to the bodies of non-human angels. The Greek word translated as “strange” here is…{drumroll)….”hetero”!!!
Karen wants the commissioners to pass a resolution asking the SkyFairy “…that He pass us by in His Coming Wrath and not destroy our County as He did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities.” I think the odds are that Blount County will survive a few more years in spite of the manifest ignorance of some of it’s legislators, and Karen and friends will conclude that the SkyFairy answered their prayers. Perhaps they could get a neighboring county to not pray to the SkyFairy. If that county were consumed by fire and brimstone, it would be the first known evidence that there actually might be a sky fairy.
Reblogged this on Fairy JerBear's Queer/Trans News, Views & More From The City Different – Santa Fe, NM and commented:
Southern political tale that reads like satire but is true…
And it helps keep Dover, PA and other non-Southern locales under the cultural radar.