Civil Commotion

The Southern Baptists will assemble for their annual meeting in Phoenix next week. They still can’t help saying stupid things, because that’s who they are, but I don’t find them so entertaining as I once did — mainly, I guess, because they cause so much undeserved harm to others. For that reason, it’s been a couple of years since I last tracked the #SBC20nn tweets and published the most ridiculous/embarrassingly stupid/offensive et cetera, et cetera.

For some reason, the SBC hasn’t published, or at least isn’t publicizing, the annual report of membership, attendance, baptisms, and so forth. I’m guessing those all are down, because evangelicals went strongly for Trump, and the few remaining grown-ups doubtless fled the denomination once for all. If anybody knows where the numbers are, let me know.

For masochists who need degradation and brain pain, I’ve put a (temporary) hashtag monitor in the sidebar.

But … what do you know? A group that fashions itself Faith in America plans to be there and to protest the SBC’s continued degradation of LGBT people.

Last week I became aware that Faith in America (FIA), a pro-LGBT advocacy group, plans to protest the 2017 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention being held next week in Phoenix, AZ. Yesterday a story regarding their plans was published in Baptist Press. This group desires to have homosexuality and transgenderism “removed from the sin list.” However, it’s as Bart Barber said on Twitter and Facebook, “Presuming that human beings get to edit ‘the sin list’ is pretty much the top item on the sin list.”

But, of course, what is and is not acceptable changes from one generation to the next, according to the growth of knowledge and the evolution of the public consensus about the behaviors that are and are not conducive to coexisting peacefully; that’s where morality comes from. Southern Baptists demand moral stasis and cannot admit that, and that is why they increasingly find themselves at the margin of community life — and angry at a world that has left their backward-looking views behind.

The Allied landing in Normandy began on this date in 1944, 73-years ago today.

There is extensive literature about that incredible day, and every year sees a couple more books published about the landing — deservedly so.

Most of the men in this famous picture never made it to the beach; they were machine-gunned and their corpses bobbing in the bloody water as wave after wave of soldiers pushed past them and gained a toehold on the beach. That achieved, the Army Rangers assaulted Pointe du Hoc, a promontory midway between Utah and Omaha beaches. At the top there were guns to be taken out.

They scaled up the 100-foot cliffs using ropes. Many of the first men to the top were shot as they topped the cliff … and then the man behind them would resume the climb upward as the body of their fellow soldier tumbled down.

Nobody will deny the military genius of D-Day, but it was the courage and persistence of citizen-soldiers that pulled it off.

Trump spokespeople have been saying for the past day or so that his tweets ought not to be taken seriously. Kellyanne Conway, for instance, complained yesterday about the media’s “obsession” with Trump’s tweets.

Kellyanne Conway on Monday protested the media’s supposed “obsession” with President Trump’s tweets after his response to the London terror attack included a misleading attack on London’s mayor.

“This obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as President…” the top White House aide said during a tense interview with NBC’s “Today” show.

Kellyanne Conway, y’all will recall, tends toward “alternative facts” and led the national mourning for the Bowling Green Massacre.

Now, just like everybody else who works for Trump, the boss has chopped-down her efforts to shield him from his own gaudy stupidity.

It looks clear to me that he wants his tweets to be taken seriously.

Now, I don’t have a problem with Trump humiliating Conway. She is an odious, dishonest person who lies for money, and she deserves nothing from any decent adult but loathing and contempt; to be on even civil terms with her is to disgrace oneself.

There is no room in this administration for honest, competent professionals.

<< SIGH >>

This is a good example of the way that an absurd, downright childish myth — Adam and Eve, and their Fall — persists and influences unrelated matters. There was no Adam and Eve, and there was no Fall; the story is harmful nonsense, however profitable it has proven for Holy Men.

Sexual identity is a real thing — an internal biological switch that is set before birth, and a Bronze Age myth tells us nothing about it. Seriously: the Godly need to grow up and face reality, and stop visiting harm upon others just because a ridiculous old book justifies their fear and malice.