The Governor of California, Jerry Brown, signed into law today, July 14, a bill requiring that the contributions of LGBT people be added to text books in California. CNN’s news article, “California governor signs bill requiring schools to teach gay history,” starts:
“Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown said Thursday he had signed a bill that will require public schools in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americas.I had already written on this before Brown signed the bill. School curriculum in California: honoring sexual orientation! There isn’t much more to say. I stated in that posting that legislators are trying to “make the point that people who are gay or lesbian are capable of doing great and good things.” And I also stated that “of course they are. We all, sinners everyone, are capable of doing great and good things.
The bill, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, will also require teachers to provide instruction on the role of people with disabilities.
But should we be honored in a child’s school textbook because we are sinners or because we have contributed some good to society?”
Our nation is desperately in need of prayer as is the PCUSA. All of us are in need of prayer. The video I am posting I mean for all the orthodox in the PCUSA who are feeling humbled before their circumstances:
19 comments:
Mrs. Larson, your interpretation of the Bible is not even the one used for ordination standards in your own denomination, but you insist on it being the standard for all of society, even after it has been explained to you that your position of "Oh we can't even mention anything positive about gay people, it offends me and my grandchildren in the schools" hurts, DEEPLY, hurts kids like the kid I was who read books and wondered;
"are people like me so bad that when we make contributions, our personal lives cannot even be SPOKEN of? They talked about the family of X, and his wife and her struggles during the war, but no mention is made of the family and loved ones of Y...are we that bad?"
The result, was a desire to die, and a misery I am determined other gay kids will NOT have to endure.
If it comes down to someone suffering that much, or your grandkids having to read that Michaelangelo was gay, and Baldwin was a great writer whose experience as a black man AND a gay man influneced his writing, well, your grandkids will adjust. Put them in private school...they will learn when they go to college or enter the business world, and will be at a disadvantage. Your choice.
I just cannot believe you are 1.) That selfish. Who said its all about you and your wants? No one will denegrate and utterly ignore the lives of Heterosexual people in history just because we now will be honoring Gay people also .2) that homophobic (as defined by the society you will be living in, you don't get to define this state). Who says Your definition of sin sets any standard? Once again, you cannot even convince the majority of voting Presbyters of your position, but you think you should set the standards for EVERYONE?
If persons such as yourself were now being denigrated, I could understand your being angry.
If your grandkids in school could be "made gay" (cannot happen, unless they already are) that would not be a bad thing in of ifself, but knowning your prejudices, I could at least understand what you were afraid of.
If you honesty thought "My standards must be the standards for society...there is no question that I am right, even in the Church, even in the medical community, even among historians and sociologists" then you might have a point, but you strike me as an honest person to the degree your deeply held prejudices allow you to be...so you have to know that None of these are the case either.
You are entitled to an opinion...but going forward, it will be pointed out to you that you are out of touch with the educational, medical, psychological and psychiatric communities on this issue, and of your own Church(denomination). You and those you agree with cannot make a good enough case to convince your own Church to keep your standards the ones in the B of Order, but inspite of all the pain and damage I have told you the sense of isolation young gay people feel from being "unspeakable" of in textbooks, you still think you view should set the standards for everyone.
Nothing is sadder than someone who has worked to oppress others and make them feel invisible indulging in self pity and trying to appear the victim just because they can no longer do so Mrs. Larson.
I pray you are not treated the way you have treated others. Oh yes, and living in a world where other people are just acknowledged in a society where we do not even have a religious agreed upon identity, and in which your own Church does ordains gay people, is not impinging on your rights any more than ethnic minorities in the south getting rights took away rights from bitter old white people...save what they saw (incorrectly) as the 'right' to set the rules for everyone and live in a world where only their views were the offical ones, and they did not have to "hear that nonsense".
Gene O'Dell
Gene,
If you comment here one more time without giving your city and state I will delete you.
To be honest, since I see that you may be coming from computers in various places I do not believe what you are saying about yourself, and if you are Kattie Coon or any other person who I have asked not to comment here I am weary of the charades. Whoever you are you are far more insulting and intolerant then any of those you are harassing.
I had compassion on you when you first responded to my first posting. But I no longer feel that way since you do not at all sound like the sensitive person I imagined. You are simply writing here to harass.
How well God must like you— you don't hang out at Sin Saloon, you don't slink along Dead-End Road,
you don't go to Smart-Mouth College.
2-3 Instead you thrill to God's Word,
you chew on Scripture day and night.
You're a tree replanted in Eden,
bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf,
always in blossom.
4-5 You're not at all like the wicked,
who are mere windblown dust—
Without defense in court,
unfit company for innocent people.
6 God charts the road you take.
The road they take is Skid Row.
The Message
I think it is a kind of stupid thing to sign the bill that will require public schools in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.
I hope my NY state would not follow the same stupidity.
Gene O'Dell has done us a service by previewing what to expect in this new "tolerant" church.
I went to a meeting a couple of weeks ago. The local Presbytery decided to send a representative to quell dissent in three congregations. It wasn't billed that way. It was supposed to be a discussion of the new amendments. About 50 people showed up to express their concerns.
Instead of listening and "discussing," the well-dressed representative of the Presbytery scolded and argued. He was clearly carrying the message of Louisville to the unenlightened hicks, rather than listening and carrying OUR message back up the food chain.
The ONLY instance of anger and name calling came when a couple got up and called us all Homophobes and stormed out of the meeting.
So much for the new age.
"honoring sinful behavior"?
Really?...
Do you really think that, after experiencing where the Nazis took Xenophobia, Bonhoeffer would have approved of your homophobic theology???
Do you really think, after falling in love with Black American music and culture, he would have promoted biblically sanctioned bigotry???
If you do, you neither understand Bonhoeffer, nor the bible he read. And in so doing you offend his memory and promote the very crimes he gave his life resisting.
Seriously
Jodie Gallo
Jodie,
What Bonhoeffer fell in love with was the black church and its fidelity to scripture at a time when the liberal church in America had lost any belief in the Word of God. "There is no theology here," he wrote.
The black church is still faithful. They were essential to Proposition 8 in California and to killing gay marriage in Maryland. Don't try to invoke them in your support of gay ordination.
He would have been appalled at what the PCUSA is doing today, and not just with ordination, but with Israel and abortion, too.
HKIM,
Please, next time leave your name, city and state.
Dave,
You have no idea how timely that was or what an encouragement you are.
Jodie because Greg answered you before I deleted you I will leave your comment there. Besides it is sometimes helpful for my orthodox friends who love Jesus, to understand how ardent that love needs to be in the coming years.
Thanks Greg. Did you notice the quote I began with. That is from his Ethics.
Mrs. Larson, I put my name, and my city, in my last post, which I see you have removed.
In the post was not one word that was untrue, or inappropriate. May I ask what frightened you so by it that you felt the need to remove it? I am purely curious, and look forward to your response.
Gene in Atlanta
Gene,
Or whoever you are, when I get someone being as insulting as you are telling me they are coming from some place that does not show up on my feed I do not allow them to post here. Do not do so again.
I've been reading Metaxas' bio of Bonhoeffer, and in the chapter Bonhoeffer in American 1930-31 he quotes from Bonhoeffer:
There is no theology here ....[The Union Students] talk a blue streak without the slightest substantive foundation and with no evidence of any critera. The students -- on the average twenty-five to thirty years old -- are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level.
On the teaching, or lack of it in NYC churches:
Things are not much different in the church. The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events. As long as I've been here, I have heard only one sermon in which you could hear somthing like a genuine proclaimation, and that was delivered by a negro (indeed, in general I'm increasingly discovering greater religious power and originality in Negroes). One big question continually attracting my attention in view of these facts is whether one here can still speak about Christianity ... There's no sense to expect the fruits where the Word is no longer being preached. But then what becomes of Christianity per se?
In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.
I think these quotes sum up what Bonhoeffer would think about what is happening in the 'mainstream' churches in the U.S. today.
Reformed Catholic,
I read the book also. It is a truly great contribution to help us understand what is happening in the mainline today.
Those quotes tell it all.
Viola,
In Gene's defense, it has been obvious to me that you don't know how the Internet works, or the limitations of your "feed" (I have used the same one by the way). There is no gaurantee that what shows up on your "feed" is accurate (read their documentation), particularly if someone accesses the internet with a cell phone or uses something like an IPad.
Kattie
Huntsville, Al
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