I can’t get the Family Research Council (a.k.a. family fearmongers’ council) to take me off their damn spam list. What began as a way to keep track of what the other side was up to has turned into a daily dose of hate in my inbox. Faithful America is a nice antidote — a PAC that reclaims religious values from the far right.
I got fed up enough to send a strongly worded response to a particularly egregious email full of lies and half-truths. I’m sure it’s falling on deaf ears over in Tony’s inbox, but maybe it will amuse you, dear Intarwebs.
From a personal appeal for dough from Tony Perkins, President of this “Christian” organization:
I want you to hear something a California pastor said to me recently:
“If we lose, we go to jail.”
It’s just that simple, says Pastor Jim Garlow–if marriage loses in California, religious liberties everywhere will be next. [Funny thing, that: here in Sodom Massachusetts, religious liberties seem to be alive and well for Christians, Muslims, Jews, pagans, and others alike, gays can get married, and marriage as we know it is still intact.]
The fight for marriage in the states is our first priority.
But we can’t take our eye off Washington, D.C. politicians. Your support is vital as we stand up to liberals who want to criminalize your religious speech . . . threaten the religious liberties of employers . . . silence conservative and Christian broadcasting . . . raise taxes . . . and impose taxpayer funding of abortion and embryonic stem cell research.
And my response:
Tony, this is an incredibly offensive letter. Christians have never been sent to jail in this country for practicing the teachings of Christ. Untold numbers of homosexuals, though, have been rounded up by police, beaten, raped, and returned to the street without charges ever being placed. Recognizing a loving, stable union between two people is not an affront to marriage. Preaching hatred and intolerance is, however, an affront to Christ’s teachings. Shame on you, and shame on your organization. Turn off your computer and read your bible.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.1 CORINTHIANS 13:1–3 (NASB)
Garden of Words 
That passage was read at a wedding I attended recently and I have since been trying to remember it – what a coincidence that it should pop up on my LJ friends list!
I generally do not read the bible, but this excerpt struck me as a particularly insightful.
Thanks for the reminder!
It’s very commonly used at weddings. Actually some friends of mine got married recently (lesbians! OMG! destroying marriage by getting married!), and they had this passage read at the wedding. I believe the “love is patient, love is kind” passage is also listed here.
I have a post-traumatic response to references to the Bible and the Christian tradition, but the older I get and the more comfortable in my own spiritual and religious practices, the more I can see the value of the teachings in the Bible.
It helps that I spend a lot of time with the feminine side of divinity. In fact, I just started taking an adult spiritual education class at my UU church called “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven.” It’s been around since the 1970s and it’s really empowering — AND based in actual historical fact.