Last Sunday, about a hundred Dallas gays and straights protested at First Baptist Church, and you can see why. According to the Dallas Observer blog,this is the church fronted by Pastor Robert Jeffress, the author of Hell? Yes! who said Mormon Mitt Romney was a member of a "cult" and who, in September, said that
"Christians are uniquely favored by God, [while] Mormons, Hindus and Muslims worship a false god." And in the 1990s, he said that homosexuality causes "the deaths of tens of thousands every year through AIDS." He's super-tolerant. Then again, Jeffress has done quite a bit for the gay community: In 1998, while he was pastor at the First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, he protested the library's carrying such titles as Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate, which only served to make them more popular.
According to the Dallas Morning News,
Dr. Jeffress acknowledged that "Jesus never used the word homosexual." However, he said, Christ condemned homosexuality by affirming Old Testament truths and by upholding God's plan for human sexuality – "one man and one woman in a marriage relationship."
In next week's sermon, Dr. Jeffress said he will address homosexuality again, including the assertion that "God wired me differently."
(Honk to the Dallas Observer; go to their site to see a slideshow of more pics from last Sunday's protest.)
It's no surprise that the LGBT community will protest at First Baptist again this Sunday, November 16. Edge Dallas gives the details for both weekend demonstrations:
National gay rights protest. Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla Drive Saturday, Nov. 15, at 12:30 p.m. JoinTheImpact.com.
Protest rally about First Baptist Church of Dallas’ publicly displayed anti-gay messages. First Baptist Church of Dallas, 1707 San Jacinto. Sunday, Nov. 16, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
BTW: The quotation from Matthew 19 in the church sign at top of this post reads like this:
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
Which for some Christians might seem to support a certain position on the gay thing. Ah, but here's the rest of that passage. Me, I got over letting the Bible or the Church stand between God and me years ago. God is bigger than both of them. You can draw your own conclusions on what the real point is here:
"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."
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