Religion was once described as a “the cluster of imperatives and beliefs which orient a life in motion,” so in the case of one Indiana church, that cluster of imperatives is that it is vitally important that anyone who ever went to gay pride should be prevented from singing.
The situation is this: the Hakes family has belonged to the St. Mary’s of the Assumption Catholic (of course) Church in Indiana for many generations. When an elderly member of the family died, one of the family members asked permission to sing at the funeral. The church is run by a guy named Bob Lengerich, who very compassionately said no because he saw on Facebook that the singer went to Pride.
Related: The Church Kicked Him Out For Being Gay, And Now His Perfect Response Has Gone Viral
Now the family has filed a complaint with the church, because if there’s one thing that organization is known for, it’s compassionate treatment of the downtrodden, careful consideration of facts, and nimble adjustment to new information.
How about we take this to the next level?
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“Anytime someone sins and then acts in the name of God, it causes scandal,” Bob Lengerich explained. Well, that’s perfectly reasonable. He’s done an excellent job of preventing a scandal.
Related: This Flow Chart That Destroys Religion’s Case Against Gay Marriage Is So Easy, Any Zealot Can Use It
In addition to the complaint, the family is also praying for the “softening of his heart,” so that should happen any minute now.
jkb
Yeah, Jesus would have done that. /S
Billy Budd
“Religion is the root of all evil”, in the words on renowned scientist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Religions turn us into bigoted inhuman beasts.
Alistair Wiseman
@Billy Budd:
Secularism has killed tens of MILLIONS in the 20th Century alone. Religion is not even remotely close.
ucepitus
@Alistair Wiseman: The fact that you can make that statement shows you actually don’t know what you’re talking about. There is nothing in atheism or secularism that promotes any kind of world view other than the lack of belief in a god or gods. The cults of personality (another way of saying religious mentality if you were unaware) that permeated the 20th century were religious themselves in that instead of a god on high it was a man in power who fashioned himself as a god (Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler,…….Trump). Over half of nazi soldiers were professing catholics. The church celebrated hitlers birthday every year until it wasn’t politically expedient for them to do so anymore. Not one nazi officer was even threatened with excommunication from the church for their crimes. Stalin was a seminarian who knew that the population of russia had been ruled for so long by czars that were treated as divine, he could use that mentality to his advantage to replace their religious views with him in place of god.
Read a fucking a book.
ChrisK
@ucepitus: Alister is too busy watching Fox News to spend any time getting to real history and actual facts.
Transiteer
SO WE NEED MORE PROOF of what man-made shit religion really is?????? Do we?? Go atheist! That’s where the good hearts are anyway.
Billy Budd
@Alistair Wiseman: Hitler and Stalin did not kill people because of a lack of belief in god. They killed millions because they were mad dictators. You don’t need god in order to be ethical, good and humanitarian. What you said is called a non sequiteur. Also, Hitler declared many times that he did believe in god and he had a wondeful relationship with the pope. His pope is now called Hitler’s pope. Watch the movie.
SamDixon3972
The good part of this story is that the family is sticking up for gay son. Usually at funerals and gatherings the wishes of the families are taken into account. Tributes, speeches and songs are usually the order at funerals.
Alistair Wiseman
@ucepitus:
@Billy Budd:
If there is no God, the labels “good” and “evil” are merely opinions. They are substitutes for “I like it” and “I don’t like it.” They are not objective realities. Every atheist philosopher has acknowledged this.
The godless 20th Century is the cruelest, bloodiest most murderous century on record. Every genocide of the last century – except for the Turkish mass murder of the Armenians and the Pakistani mass murder of Hindus in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was committed by a secular anti-Jewish and anti-Christian regime. (Since the two exceptions are Muslim, they are not relevant to my argument for the God and Bible of the Judeo-Christian religions.)
Billy Budd
@Alistair Wiseman: Religion has messed up with your brain, Alistair. Morality and Ethics are abstract concepts that are independent from religion or the existence of God. A set of “rules” or guidances taken as correct should take into acount only THE POTENTIAL TO CAUSE HARM OR GOOD TO OTHERS. You don’t need the existence of a creator to believe in this. You don’t need to read a book that was written by ancient ignorant tribes more than 2 millenia ago in order to know what to do and how to think. You don’t have to go to church to be a good person. Being a good person is a choice and it has nothing to do with god and religion.
1EqualityUSA
Godlessness doesn’t make humans less cruel, just less hypocritical in our cruelty.
Xzamilloh
Oh, look… and no tie-in to Islam. That’s funny, Benji, because you were falling all over yourself in that story about Indonesia to equate Christianity to Islam, but nothing about how it’s so much better here in America, a country comprised mainly of Christians, than it is for our LGBT’s in Islamic countries. But, that’s the beauty of being an atheist who doesn’t need to make excuses for primitive belief systems: you can just call them all out on their atrocities and regressive doctrines.
@Alistair Wiseman: COMMUNISM, my intellectually dishonest friend. COMMUNISM killed millions, which is basically its own belief system that replaces worship of a deity with worship of state parties. Name ONE secularist who killed millions because of secularism.
Xzamilloh
@1EqualityUSA: It also makes us more accountable to each other for said cruelty. Maybe if the lack of a god is there, people won’t look to a spiritual bandaid to cleanse them of their earthly boo-boos and will make amends with the people they have wronged in THIS lifetime instead of morally absolving themselves of having to do anything because “The lord forgives me of my sins.” I contend that not only does godlessness make humans less cruel, it makes them less susceptible to other types of hogwash that have no evidence.
Chris
@Alistair Wiseman: You’re right; religion’s killing toll was at hundreds of millions, if not billions, for the 20th century alone.
o.codone
@Xzamilloh:
You called Alistair Wiseman: “my intellectually dishonest friend”. There is nothing more intellectually dishonest than liberal progressive agenda. A few examples. Clinton, a blow job isn’t sex. Remember that? How about (the fetus) is not a baby if it’s unplanned/unwanted. And let’s go all the way back to 1857 with the Democrat party support of the Dred Scott decision. See, there’s no one more delusional or intellectually dishonest than liberal Democrats.
bob 052985
O.codone
Labels, you need to be able to put up a valid argument without using labels. It is sad that ALL LIBERALS are bad people in your eyes. You and alot of people like you need to GROW UP.
As far as your comparisons go with Clinton etc…. I could name you another Republican that is just as guilty. And, your really stretching with the Dred Scott deal. Religion, has caused more wars, killed more people and do more harm in our society in the past as well as today.
Stew on that for awhile
Alistair Wiseman
@Billy Budd:
@Xzamilloh:
One of the many beliefs – i.e. non-empirically based doctrines – of the post-Christian West has been that moral progress is the human norm especially so with the demise of religion. In a secular world, the self-described enlightened thinking goes, superstition is replaced by reason, and reason leads to moral good.
Of course, it turned out that the post-Christian West produced considerably more evil than the Christian world had. No mass cruelty in the name of Christianity approximated the vastness of the cruelty unleashed by secular doctrines and regimes in the post-Christian world. The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism.
There were never any Christian Auschwitzes – i.e., systematic genocides of every man, woman and child of a particular race or religion. Nor were there Christian Gulags – the shipping of millions of innocents to conditions so horrific that prolonged suffering leading to death was the almost – inevitable end.
To respond that Nazism and Communism were religions and not secular movements and to deny that is to tell a gargantuan lie. Even if one argues that Nazism and Communism were religions, they were nevertheless secular religions. That too many Christians morally failed when confronted with Nazism is true, but irrelevant to the fact that Nazism was in no way a Christian movement.
Communism and Nazism were indeed religion-like on their hold on people, but were completely secular movements and doctrines. Moreover, Communism was violently anti-religious, and Nazism affirmed pre-Christian – what we tend to call “pagan” – values and beliefs.
And now the post-Christian world is getting worse.
The moral news about the world in which we live is almost unremittingly negative.
Alistair Wiseman
@Billy Budd:
“You don’t have to go to church to be a good person.”
Agreed. And if you read what I actually wrote, never said likewise.
Alistair Wiseman
@Chris:
Please @Chris:, tell me more about the “hundreds of millions, if not billions” that are part of “religion’s killing toll”.
Can you please list the “hundreds of millions, if not billions” of these religious dead? Historians would love to hear about this new revelation.
Xzamilloh
@o.codone: What the fuck does any of that have to do with the topic at hand? Are you just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, or are you on the wrong page?
@Alistair Wiseman: I noticed in that long-winded spiel, there wasn’t a name of a secularist who killed in the name of secularism. Just saying…
Heywood Jablowme
Wow, this comment thread got a little off track.
I doubt that Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong or Pol Pot would have let this gay guy sing at his relative’s funeral either!
SFHandyman
Go to the priest’s Facebook page. He is at least 110% gay. His photos are so cliche gay.
He is either super self-hating or afraid of temptation.