A crazy day in which I have had not much time at all to blog, but before the day ends, I do want to take note of (and make a statement of sincere thanks for) Fred Clark's commentary today about my posting yesterday pointing out that Religion News Service's recent article, "Gay Rights vs. Religious Rights," keeps the us-vs.-them meme about religious folks and the gays alive in the very week after the NALT project was launched. NALT was launched in order to demonstrate that there are a lot of believers who recognize and support gay rights and love gay folks.
Fred writes,
William Lindsey is not pleased with Sarah Pulliam Bailey’s misleading report for Religion News Service. The RNS headline for Bailey’s piece is double-wrong, “Gay Rights vs. Christian Rights.” That headline could only be true in a world in which: A) No LGBT people are Christians and no Christians are LGBT; and B) all Christians are unanimously and universally opposed to gay rights. False and false.
It’s not easy to get two lies into a single headline while simultaneously slandering LGBT Christians and misrepresenting the church, but RNS pulled it off.
Bonus boneheadedness: Bailey’s RNS article the previous day was this: “NALT alliance says Not All (Christians are) Like That on Homosexuality.” So, at best, RNS’ headline writer on Friday didn’t read Bailey’s piece on Thursday. Either that or the Friday headline writer was intent on refuting not just Thursday’s headline, but the witness of every Christian in Thursday’s report.
As I noted a few days ago, Fred is one of those straight allies of gay folks in the Christian churches who disproves the us-vs.-them meme about Christians and gays and who is part of the NALT project. It's high time this meme be retired, along with the really troubling (and harmful) othering that the meme promotes, as people of faith consider the place of gay folks in the scheme of things.
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