Rumblings

Ever thought about the power of ridicule? Good old fashioned ridicule and laughter…. at something. It may be big and powerful, and obscene, it may be real good serious, but ridicule kind of carries things with it.

What brought it to mind is Pastor Doctor Martin ‘eat da poo poo’ Ssempa.

He is famous. But in an infamous way. Seems the vid has gone viral, with attendant peals of laughter. Well, I have been in audiences when he did the demos, and I was usually very angry. Too angry to be amused, too angered to find anything funny in what he did, what he showed, how he depicted gay people. Of course, what would anger me most would be the hypocrisy of saying that he LOVES gay people, and then go ahead and do the things.

Maybe love is in the eyes of a beholder…!

When the clip hit the web, it went viral, and people realy like it. They watch it, re-blog it, they comment, and I hope they also watch ‘Missionaries of Hate’ the documentary. It is the belly laugh that follows the ‘eat da poo poo’ vid which intrigues me. I thought these things were too serious for me to laugh at them. I mean, my ass is the one in the pan, in more ways than one. But, come to think of it, it is funny-; what Ssempa believed to be his signature tune, is his signature tune. It has made him wildly famous beyond his dreams. And, it is the kind of fame with laughter which would deeply puzzle him.

So, in our arsenal, we do have laughter… but we need to lighten up too!

Anyway, it also makes the ‘taskforce’ famous.

The delay of the bill, coupled with the fact that lots of homophobia was being whipped up seems to have spawned something ugly. I was talking to a gay friend last night while we were watching the boys. Apparently, someone sent his immediate boss a letter very similar to the blackmailing letter here.  They exposed that he is gay, and demanded that he is sacked. It is a tricky situation for him, and he is hitting back as well as he could.

But, what concerns me is that there maybe others like this letter out there. Blackmailing, extorting something. And, some of us are more vulnerable than others. Fact, we are all vulnerable, and work is precious. Are we ready for a truly organized anti-gay vigilante force? And, before you laugh that off, remember what was happening last year in the Pastor Wars. Our good Christian Pentecostal pastors have proved before that they are very, very capable of such visciousness. All in the name of god, of course. Of course, it could be worse. We did hear rumours that the Tabliqs were drawing up names for a hit list… 

Hope those stay as rumours.

On a better note, some gay Christians are hitting back at the gay bashing that Christians subject us too. Come to think of it, it is one of the things that I do like about the Throckmorton blog.... calling out 'Christian hate'. Bigotry is too easy to confuse with being 'religious' or behind the blinders of 'culture'. Those two labels stop thought in its track, excuse a lot of inexcusable things. As I was commenting, some gay Christians are making a stand, here.

many in the LGBT community are willing to concede the entire Christian faith to the likes of Fred Phelps and his “God hates fags” clan. They insist that Christians are beyond redemption, and that the only step forward for the LGBT community is to somehow rid the world of Christianity altogether. (I wonder how they plan to accomplish that!)

Those of us at The Gay Christian Network think otherwise.

We know that there are many LGBT and affirming Christians in the world. We know that too often, we’ve allowed the anti-LGBT Christians to speak for our faith while we remain silent. Frankly, they’ve been better organized and more vocal. And we aren’t willing to put up with that anymore.

Starting, I say, but of course there are many Gay Christian affirming organisations out there. The likes of Integrity, Changing Attitude, Other Sheep.... Maybe the militancy of the Christian Right has overshadowed them?

Yeah, life limps on. Seems like, sometimes. Are you enjoying the World Cup football? Seems like there are the usual upsets….! Well, it is the World Cup.

Have a great day.

gug