I’ve found the evangelical/southern baptist/”born again christian” tent is the perfect hiding ground for closet cases with venom for openly gay people.

The smalltown private southern baptist college I attended for 2 years was swarming with closet cases LOL! It was an “everybody knows everybody” atmosphere, and I watched several flaming queens marry clueless females.

No they’re not. There is a difference between forcing an issue that is based on an ancient book, and forcing an issue that is backed up by overwhelming evidence.

“And certainly it has matured enough to give a white, heterosexual male with a patriarchal message of obedience to speak to our divided, sexualized, materialistic and now bankrupt country”

I’d still like to know why in the hell people feel like they have to violate the government’s separation of church and state. Yes that is your belief, R. Gray, but that statement you just made shows that you want to push religious values onto the government.

And certainly it has matured enough to give a white, heterosexual male with a patriarchal message of obedience to speak to our divided, sexualized, materialistic and now bankrupt country.

Micheal you have to do better than this: to simply announce that a mature vote is equivalent to voting for Obama is just not insightful. Actually, voting for someone out of fear of being labeled a racist is the gramscian folly once again and is actually less mature.

I could ask you for documentation that supports your stereotype, but unlike you, I won’t do this. Some of the religious right has corrupted itself, but you go too far. But above all, lack of such societal restraint is not a quality that one would reasonably contribute to rightism. Its a social stabilizer. Liberalism, especially with liberal christian underwriting, pushes society to greater secularism and atheism, undoing much of what normally holds society together. And I come back to my point that this lack of restraint is a reflection of baby boomers themselves.

Now there you go: more slanderous assumptions. I love this tactic: characterizing your opponent’s repertoire as being programmed. And what evidence do you have of this? And again, how do you know that I don’t primarily engage other fellow Christians. You have again made erroneous assumptions and then followed through with a response formulated with the same amount of prejudice you say that I have.

2. I’m post-baby-boomer, but my parents were both middle-America baby-boomers from opposing social backgrounds. Your overgeneralization of the “degenerate” baby-boom generation does not compute. That generation was a mix of liberals and conservatives who learned from atom-bomb test fallout, Vietnam, Watergate, stagflation, and Three Mile Island that neither Democrats nor Republicans could be trusted to govern in the interests of the people. In that generation, “conservatives” were often sexually conservative but financially and environmentally liberal (anti-regulation), while “liberals” were often the opposite: liberally opposed to the regulation of sexual freedom, but inclined to regulate activities that cause maldistribution of wealth, outright theft and graft, or damage to the air, water and food we breathe. In practice this conflict has resulted in a lot of shouting while each side’s vices (you decide what the vices are) continue unchecked.

You state: “America has so accepted the lie of political correctness and multiculturalism that it can no longer see is own distortion”

There may be some truth in this, but it also is a projection. You too have accepted some assumptions of political correctness and you seem not to see your distortions of gospel and/or reality. You cite cherry-picked warlike passages but you ignore the Beatitudes and Micah 6:8. Perhaps the Bible and the Christian God are more complicated or different than you realize.

Regarding turning the other cheek: That exact same point — that the act is one of resistance, not pacifism — has been used by Soulforce and countless liberal Christian groups involved in the civil rights movement.

I suspect you might benefit from familiarizing yourself with the REAL arguments of those whom you wrongly assume are hippies. You aren’t going to learn about real people from talk radio, activists’ sound bites, or partisan preachers’ sermons. You will have to engage fellow Christians directly.

Dobson and Warren do not stand up to the powers of the world; they ARE AMONG those powers and principalities. The religious right has corrupted itself with power and compromised its message with half-truths and hypocritical objections to opposing interests that are, at times, just like them.

America has so accepted the lie of political correctness and multiculturalism that it can no longer see is own distortion of the gospel with respect to homosexuality and dissent. I am ashamed of the degenerate generation that has hippified Jesus’ message. Remember he said “I do not come in peace…”. The rest of the passage suggests that God’s love will require discrimination, pain and growth. Take another distortion “Turn the other cheek” used by PC Christians to justify hippie love. A close study of this phrase reveals that Jesus meant that by turning the other cheek, we are ready to accept a counter blow and asking for more, demanding equality. Its not pacifist love that translates today into hugging any societal thing that comes through the front door.

Society has pulled Christianity into the way of the world. Rick Warren knows this, and his holding the truth illicits outrage, which usually happens to someone who stands up to the powers of the world.