Parting Glances: A John by Any Other Name

SOURCE: Lone Star Police Gazette & Badge Polisher (Waco, Texas).
HEADLINE: Undercover cops make Sunday surprise restroom arrests.
Mark your activist, Sunday-go-to-meeting desk calendar …
"While thousands were inside the Hallelujah Handclap of Hope Tabernacle Miracle Megachurch singing 'Love Lifted Me,' six weeks of amazing undercover police work came to a head, so to speak, last Advent Sunday.
"Several persons were 'nabbed.' They were sitting in the wrong church stall at the wrong time. Arrests were made without drawing undue attention to the offenders. Each was escorted from church property in a covering choir or baptismal robe.
"Those arrested were fortunately proven to be of baptismal age at the Waco District Six Police Headquarters, once their respective collected wallets, IDs, pants, shirts, long johns, occasional high heels, were sorted through and matched to the individual arrestee configuration.
"The match-up process took a little under three hours, in part due to the asking of what is essentially a touchy theocratic question involving whether or not a violation of the HHH Tabernacle's posted men's restroom requirement occurred.
"Those arrested were advised that they have a right to refuse to divulge status, vis-a-vis the unequivocal sanctioned use of the facility in question, clearly marked in large English Gothic letters SAVED in contradistinction to another similar restroom 200 feet away marked plainly UNSAVED.
"Even so, one or two of the arrestees are brazenly thinking of asking so-called LGBT lawyers to bring legal action against the megachurch for what is — at least to arrestee preconceived perception — a clear case of discrimination involving use of a public-blessed, sin-free, toll-free facility.
"Rev. Delburt B. Windwiper, HHH pastor, when contacted on the QT by Lone Star reporter Lois Lane-Kent, is alleged to have said, 'I don't see how they have a p–ing leg to stand on. The simple fact is you're either saved or you're unsaved. This certainly isn't discrimination in God's sight. If you're going to Hell, well, you're going to Hell. No matter what restroom you happen to frequent, and for whatever the burning urgency.
"'What's really offensive to any fair-minded Christian is that the offenders did their nefarious business a) on Sundays and b) in a restroom clearly marked for the whole world to see. SAVED! That's something that's just not done.
"'I want to make it abundantly clear! We — that is our HHH board of directors, our financial banking investment team, our health store employees, our senior citizens retirement association, our American chain of Bible trinket shops, all 5,000 saved, baptized not sprinkled, primarily Republican HHH members — we don't discriminate.
"'Our members include blacks (at last count four), Mexicanos (two, with appropriate Green Card), Jewish converts (.5), assorted others (probably in the neighborhood — maybe a less affluent one at that — of 12).
"'We tried to include gays (the balcony last two rows) but look what's happened. Six months ago, it was brought to board attention that these gays were being bold as brass in using the restroom they had no business using. Not one of 10 in 10,000 is saved.
"'If you're not SAVED, it would stand to reason that you'd use the UNSAVED facility, which by the way is just as clean, although the Bible-verse toilet tissue and paper towels therein aren't blessed.'"
Charge: "Disorderly conduct for staging so-called weekly 'nude-in' protests with occasional Gospel Tract toilet bowl closings to affect status change of perceived discrimination in the use of a necessary adjunct to optimal daily good health, mental well being of unsaved, unrelenting gay persons."
Amen. Ah-men. Whatever!