Dissident Veteran For Peace: The Repressed Religious Right

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

The Repressed Religious Right

Reuters is reporting that "A second Colorado evangelical leader in little over a month has resigned from the pulpit over a scandal involving gay sex, church officials said on Tuesday." It's not a novel idea to suggest that much of the homophobia and transphobia from the Religious Right is rooted in internalized self-hatred and repression. Some of the conservative clergy clearly "doth protest too much" although Paul Barnes--the latest Evangelical pastor to"come out" does not seem to be one of them.

Paul Barnes has resigned from the 2,100-member Grace Chapel, a church he founded in suburban Denver, said church spokeswoman Michelle Ames. Barnes' resignation follows last month's admission by high-profile preacher Ted Haggard that he was guilty of unspecified "sexual immorality" after a male prostitute went public with their liaisons.
...
Ames said Barnes told his congregation in a videotaped message on Sunday he had "struggled with homosexuality since he was five years old." Barnes was confronted by an associate pastor of the church who received an anonymous phone call from a person who heard someone was threatening to go public with the names of Barnes and other evangelical leaders who engaged in homosexual behavior, Ames said.

Best wishes to Paul Barnes. The vilification of him from Right and Left is already in evidence on the internet. Truth Wins Out strikes the right tone, I think:

"After the fall of Ted Haggard and Paul Barnes, it is time for conservative churches to admit that their approach to homosexuality is an experiment that has failed," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out, a non-profit organization that monitors so-called ex-gay ministries. "How many lives will be shattered, families destroyed and careers ruined before the religious right accepts gay people for who they are? "Instead of tired anti-gay apologetics, the evangelical church should offer apologies to the gay and lesbian community and move swiftly to change their out-of-touch anti-gay positions," added Besen.

# posted by PeaceMonger @ 12/12/2006 09:19:00 PM