By Leslie Robinson
In North Carolina, Baptists want to make it clear that gays are as welcome in their churches as collection-plate pilferers.
The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina's board of directors has proposed that churches that behave in a Christian fashion toward gays should get the boot from the state organization. Specifically, a church that ordains homosexual clergy, publicly states support for homosexuality, or accepts homosexual members is no church of theirs, thank you very much.
The policy will be put to the delegates at the convention's annual meeting in November. Board president Don Warren told The Associated Press he's certain the delegates will approve.
"We believe homosexuality is sin, as are many others," he said. "But we are not aware of any other sin that has a national organization that promotes its happening beginning in kindergarten and first grade."
Naturally I believe he's wronger than the word "wronger" about homosexuality being a sin. But I'll go along with it for the moment, because he does raise one point that's worth pursuing. How come other sins don't have national organizations?
After all, LGBT people have the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and a whole pack of groups to inflict our agenda on the population. But who's representing the other bad guys out there? Who's making their case? It's a sad state of affairs.
Consider the seven deadly sins, and how nobody advocates for little old them.
Take gluttony. Organization after organization warns against over-eating, but there's no coherent voice promoting the opposite view. That can change, and by God, it will. We must form the Society for Gustatory Immoderation, whose lobbyists will take Washington by storm, once they squeeze through the doors of the Capitol.
How about sloth? I see a rosier future in this country for lazy folks once the Association for the Advancement of Sloth takes root. Its symbol will have to be a sloth. Lying in a tree. Asleep.
You could argue that greed is already doing well in America, but I know it can do better. It just needs the power of a national organization behind it. I like the sound of The Greed Guild. Its symbol could be a couple of itchy fingers.
I'm certain this group could achieve a huge membership. Think back to Mr. Warren's comment about the sin of gayness showing up at very early ages. I'm not a greedy person now, but I showed signs of it when I was a child. In elementary school I had to diagram the house I wanted to live in someday. I suppose this assignment was meant to foster imagination; in me it fostered full-fledged intemperance. My house not only had an indoor pool, it had an indoor football field.
Had somebody from The Greed Guild looked at this temple of avarice, pulled my parents aside and whispered, "She's our kind of gal," I might've been put on the proper path and now be a beacon of voracity.
More of the seven deadlies also appear when we're young. I didn't know I was gay until I was 30, but I knew I had wrath in me by 5. I was angry that my baby brother got all the attention. I was angry at the existence of cooked carrots. Think of all that wrath gone to waste with no national organization to celebrate it. Why, that makes me mad.
The Lust League, the Society for Envy, The Pride Group – wait, that's encroaching on homo territory. Oh well. I guess we can share with another sin. We've been committing our sin for thousands of years, organized only recently, and now we're being banned from churches. Currently that's an impact the seven deadly sins can only dream of.
