Another Day for You and Me in Paradise...

So guess what we've found out today?

Not only did the Man from Nantucket have a not-so-big gay following (consisting of one male escort), and a mega church of 14,000 dead-in-Christ (who shall be the first to rise at the rapture...), he had a small role to play in Jesus Camp... You remember, the camp run by a right-wing nut job that brainwashes kids to be "soldiers for Christ." In parts of the movie Jesus Camp, you can see the not-so-Reverend Ted Haggard saying things like this:

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He tells the vast audience, "We don't have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity. It's written in the Bible."

Then Haggard looks into the camera and says kiddingly: "I think I know what you did last night," drawing laughs from the crowd. "If you send me a thousand dollars, I won't tell your wife."

Later, another joke for the filmmakers: "If you use any of this, I'll sue you."
[...]
Haggard has disputed the way he is portrayed in "Jesus Camp," saying on his Web site (in a posting that since has been removed) that the filmmakers shot for hours at his church and only used the parts in which he was playing with negative stereotypes.

Ewing and Grady say Haggard is the only one who has complained about the way he was depicted in the film.

"Jesus Camp" also shows Haggard speaking to an aspiring young preacher named Levi, asking him whether people listen to him because he's a kid or because he has something to say. His advice: "Use your cute-kid thing until you're 30, and by then you'll have good content."
[...]
Haggard also leads the audience in praying for President Bush to select a Supreme Court nominee who supports their beliefs (it would end up becoming Samuel Alito) and later brags about the rapid expansion of evangelicalism.

"It's got enough growth to essentially sway every election," Haggard says with a smile. "If the evangelicals vote, they determine the election."

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Do you remember how this all came about? First, Haggards "lover" (okay, okay, to use Haggard's term, "masseusse") came forward to show how the hypocritical pastor was getting his jollies n the side while trying to deny homosexuals equal access to (secular) marriage laws. Haggard denies everything. (Lie #1) The next day, Haggard comes out and says "Oh, hell no! He gave me a massage, and I was tempted to ask him where to get meth, then I threw the meth away. I never had sex with that man." (Lie #2) The day after that, he admits to his church that he was guilty of "sexual immorality" but most of what his ex-lover said was a lie... (Hmm, who has shown themselves to be a liar? Let me think, let me think...)

You know, the stupid, stupid man could have just been open and honest about everything from the get-go instead of breaking one of the big Top Ten Commandments, but seeing as how he couldn't even have respect for himself and who he was, why would he respect others, let alone religious tenants? I think we can tell, not only from his endorsement of a camp created to brainwashing children, but from some of these excerpts, what the man truly felt for his blind following of 14,000--"Use your cute-kid thing until you're 30, and by then you'll have good content." They just needed lied to...

This is what happens when you deny yourself from being you. It starts this snowball of hate, deception, anger, bitterness... and you end up with lies, broken lives, lost faith, and stunned persons who thought they knew you...

Ted, Ted, Ted... Hopefully this will lead you to healing, and an acceptance of who you truly are. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to be that way, I suppose.... we all have things about ourselves we'd like to change. The difference is, just because I would like to weigh a bit less, I'm not campaigning for all persons over their ideal weight to be discriminated against. Persons who would like to change their hair color aren't trying to constitutionally ban red hair while dying their naturally red hair black or nut brown while calling red-heads "of the devil and "evil"... You are who you are. We all are who we all are. Until we can all learn to accept each other for who we are, the hypocrisy and lies will never end, and that's the truth...

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Shifting Gears...

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I was on a road trip with my mother today all up and down the eastern coast. We bought some burn barrels, did lunch, watched television a little about a man who was holed up less than a mile from her house after having robbed guns from a store and held up two local businesses....

I also learned about how, one time when my mom was a little girl, her mother (you remember my evil grandmother?) was dying to see a movie starring Barbara Streisand. (Yeah, I don't get it either, but hey, whatever...) Anyway, Mom distinctly remembers that Grandmom was fearfully worried that someone would see them standing in line to go into a movie theater (Gasp!). Mom remembers Grandmom saying over and over, "I hope no one sees us. I hope no one sees us." And all I could think while Mom was telling me this story was, "How sad." Here my grandmother was, a mother of three, married for years, probably in her early to mid-forties, and the complete and utterly abhorrent mind set that my great-grandfather had raised her on caused her to fear even being seen going to see a movie. A RATED G movie, at that.

This is the vile, evil environment that my grandmother (and subsequently my mother) were raised on:

1. Dancing, in any form, was evil and of the devil (and lead one to premarital sex).
2. Rock music, in any form or any means, was of the devil (causing one's body to move rhythmically and sensually, leading one to premarital sex). Only gospel (and a very small amount of country music) were worthy to listen to.
3. Going to a movie theater was sinful.
4. Playing cards were evil and satanic.
5. Even considering dating someone who wasn't going to your church was bad (verging on evil, unless you convinced them to start going to church)
6. Basically any social activity outside of the church walls was bad (verging on evil as well)

Holy Hannah mother of god, it's amazing me and my four siblings even remotely had a snowballs chance in hell at being able to think for ourselves! Luckily, my mother, through time and life's many curves, grew to understand the mind set that turns many people into ugly, nasty Christians... The whole mentality of being "apart form the world," a mentality that drives many to be so uber concerned with what the world thinks about them that their every action, their every thought, their every waking moment is spent trying to appear not of the world and is no longer about loving your neighbor, but about judging your neighbor, and how they might be judging you...

This is the very mind set that drove my grandmother to her crazy version of what love is, what love means, and why love cannot only not be trusted, cannot be unconditional. And thus, is how she interacts with her entire progeny...

Sigh. Christian fundies make monsters. That's all there is to it. They create a bunch of people so concerned with how they look and act to others, they become obsessed with what others are doing (or not doing), they become so concerned with saving face, appearing godly to the ungodly masses, covering up sins to prove the sin-saving power of Jaysus, and what does the world get in return? Scandals, lies, cover-ups, sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll....

Which, in the end, just proves their as human as the rest of us with one distinct difference: we would have accepted them for who they were to begin with; they never learned to accept themselves for being human...