A Conspiracy of Gay Witches...

Well...sorta.
I had a phone call last night from my Grandfather, who is a retired Baptist missionary. I love my grandpa very much, but sometimes he just really confuses me.

First, it is important to note that he almost never calls me just to chat. Generally, he sends e-mails with links to conservative Christian groups that will assist me in fighting off the liberal bias in my university. While he means it to be a form of assistance, I have to take it as something of comic relief.

I don't mean to make light of his beliefs. He is very sincere in his faith, and he has had a long and fruitful retirement career of serving prisoners, which is something that I really think the modern church ignores.

Still, I was a bit surprised when he began to talk about this speaker from the Christian Coalition who had come to urge their church to really strive to vote for a PA bill that would limit marriage to one man and one woman. This in and of itself was not surprising. This is part of the main reason that he calls me, to make sure that I am still a Christian...and a conservative one at that. (If he only knew)

I was a bit surprised when he said that his county had voted democratic in the last election. It had always seemed like such a staid and conservative hotbed...like most of Ohio. I asked him, "How did that come to be?"

His answer was, "Well, just to the east a bit, there is a community where we have a daughter church [I'm not sure what a daughter church is or why it is different from a son church. I didn't know that churches could procreate in that way or have defined gender.]. They are really struggling with the large number of homosexuals and people interested in witchcraft who are really giving them a hard time."

This immediately called to mind an image of a smoke-filled room with a large circular table. Around it sit the cast of Queer Eye, Rosie, a number of people who look like extras from "Manos the Hands of Fate," some fourteen-year-olds in pale make-up and black clothes, and in the gloom, I can kinda see Usher. I don't know which side he supports. They begin to plot and scheme about how they can destroy this small Eastern PA church. Cackles abound.

I know that in many places in the world the Church is really under attack. Christians are daily killed because they are Christians. To equate that experience with being responded to angrily when you try to force tracts down people's throats at an antique fair seems a bit problematic.

Check out Reb. Michael Lerner's "The Left Hand of God".