Memphis’s city council is currently holding hearings on an inclusive non-discrimination ordinance which has strong support from the community.  The first hearing went a bit like this, via Bianca Phillips at The Memphis Flyer:

The ordinance’s sponsor Janis Fullilove pleaded a passionate case for equal treatment of LGBT city workers, as well as employees working for companies contracting with the city. Fullilove called the need for equality at City Hall a “human issue,” and praised FedEx for taking the lead by adopting a similar policy protecting their workers. She also addressed the concerns of some conservative Christians that a non-discrimination ordinance would allow transgender people to use restrooms for the opposite sex.

“I know there are a lot of people with concerns about people going to the restroom. But how many times do you go into a restroom and look into the stall and ask, what are you? A man or a woman?” Fullilove said.

She continued: “If you had a daughter or son who was gay, would you not want them to be able to work and support themselves?”

(…)

Supporters of the ordinance literally sat across the room from opponents of LGBT protections (many of them wearing “one man, one woman” stickers as if the discussion were about gay marriage). Tennessee Equality Project’s Jonathan Cole, whose equality organization helped draft the ordinance, spoke on behalf of the ordinance’s supporters.

“Right now, it’s totally legal for the city or someone who contracts with the city to fire someone for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender,” Cole said. Cole cited a few stories he’d heard about city employees being denied promotions and even fired after their employer learned their sexual orientation.

Following Cole, Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, spoke in opposition, but it seemed as though he didn’t fully understand the scope of the ordinance. Gaines talked as though he believed the ordinance would affect private businesses, but it actually only affects city workers and companies who contract with the city.

“What if a Christian childcare facility is forced to hire a man dressed like a woman?” Gaines asked.

Really, Bellevue Baptist Church pastor Steve Gaines?  Because I’m finding it a little bit too cute by half to believe that Gaines’ utmost concern is for the welfare of children.  Why?  From StopBaptistPredators.org:

Pastor Steve Gaines knew that one of his staff ministers had sexually abused a kid years earlier. What did he do? He kept quiet. Not until 6 months later, when the news was broken in a blog was the congregation finally informed. It was a “church matter” said the pastor, and he gave a sermon on “grace” and redemption.

For anyone who thought clergy sex abuse was “just” a Catholic problem, Bellevue should be a wake-up call.

Minister Paul Williams reported for child molestation.

He commonly counseled molestation victims, who told him their personal and painful stories.

Pastor Steve Gaines knew for 6 months and kept quiet.

Pastor Gaines calls it a “moral failure” and justifies his silence because Williams said there was “no reoccurrence.”

(…)

Seminary president urges Pastor Gaines to resign. “If Steve Gaines found out that a child had been sexually molested by one of his ministers and if he did nothing to address it, then he needs to step down immediately,” Dr. Michael Spradlin, the president of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary said.

(…)

Deacon Michael R. Pruett urges church discipline, NOT for Pastor Gaines who kept the matter secret, but for those who brought this to light! “Where is love in all of this?” he asks. (Here’s the answer Deacon Pruett: Love resides in doing everything possible to protect the young against sexual abuse. That sort of love requires courageous truth-telling and transparency.)

(…)

Report shows that what pastor Gaines called a “moral failure” – and kept quiet about – was really minister Williams’ “egregious, perverse sexual activity with his adolescent son over a period of 12 to 18 months.”

Nice!  Pastor Gaines apparently decided to play the “It’s not child rape if he sez he only raped the boy once!” card.  It’s amazing (but strangely, not surprising) that the man the anti-gay side has chosen as a spokesperson is more concerned about hurting gay people than protecting the innocence of the children in his congregation.

Michelle Bliss was in the hearing when the pedophile-protecting Steve Gaines spoke, and, as a mother and as a citizen, she was outraged:

Dr. Gaines represented himself before the City Council as a moral authority, speaking for “people of faith.” That is outrageous. He has shown an egregious lack of respect for the members of his church, the members of this community, and the duty as a citizen under the law to report a crime. It is unfathomable that a person who has so blatantly circumvented the law in order to protect the reputation of his organization, with callous disregard for the health and safety of his church members and the community at large, should be representing the faith community in any capacity. Perhaps Dr. Gaines thinks the people of this community have forgotten about his so-called “moral failure”; I can assure him we have not. Dr. Steve Gaines did tell the truth about one thing at the Council meeting; he does NOT speak for all Christians. He does not speak with any moral authority at all. He speaks, as he has in the past, for his own twisted sense of morality, nothing more.

As in every other city, this is the quality of our opposition.  They are far too consumed with their own irrational fear and hatred of LGBT people to see that, if anything, they are the ones who are truly a threat to our children and our families.  They’re so concerned with the continuity of their bigoted, patriarchal, Iron Age narrative that they’re willing to shove anything under the rug to protect their image — even child rape!

But remember, kids:  In their world, a child is better off being raised by a biological parent who happens to be a rapist than it is to be raised by a loving, healthy, happy, invested-in-every-way gay couple.

Because that’s what they think the Bible says.

If those are “Judeo-Christian” values, we’re better off without them.

Related: In case you forgot, this is the same church that pitched a wussy little hissy fit when they found out that a softball coach on their league, which they had opened to the public, was a big scary lesbian.  It would have been fine if Steve Gaines or Paul Williams had been the coach though, because they’re good old fashioned White Heterosexual Christians, and are therefore Saved, and if Jesus forgets about their sins, then you should too.  How dare you question the patriarchy?

I think we can officially say the Catholic Church has become a moral joke:

According to published reports, the Vatican is soon to release new norms that govern matters of sexual abuse by clergy. (Ho hum—but wait, there’s more.) They are expected to include the ordination of women under the delicta graviora, the same category of grave sin that governs sexual abuse by priests. Cue the music of doom!

Music of doom, indeed.  Women doing religious teaching = priests raping kids.  But then again, if there are women in the priesthood, they might interfere with the special relationship so many Catholic priests have enjoyed with their personal, unwilling sex slaves over the years.  That’s just a bridge too far, ladies.

Mixing the two issues, even under the same legal umbrella, is a profoundly perverse proposition. Either these gentlemen are more ethically tone deaf than one can imagine, or they are sly beyond the dreams of foxes in an effort to redirect attention from the criminal behavior of clergy against children to their wrath over the ordination of women.

Look over there!  Misogyny!  Pay no attention to the altar boys kneeling before various parish priests and bishops!

Perhaps they reason that the women’s ordination cases will keep them so busy that the pedophilia crimes will go away. Maybe they think people will be so scandalized by women wanting to get on with the ministry of the church at a time when the institution is morally bankrupt that they will forget the cover-ups that necessitated this revision of law in the first place. Or, perhaps the foxes may really think that this effort to centralize power with even less accountability can take place quietly since so many people will be exercised over the mere suggestion of women priests.

Completely morally bankrupt.  You really should read the whole thing.

Sometimes even moderate to liberal religious believers bristle at the claim that most organized religion is inherently misogynistic, asserting that their policies which just so happen to subjugate women are merely tradition, or giving long theological explanations for why obvious subjugation isn’t subjugation at all, but is somehow a reflection of Christ, or some such blather. I remember this from growing up in a Shi’a Presbyterian church, where women weren’t allowed to hold any positions of authority over men, to the point that the female Sunday School teachers were only able to teach adults if their husbands were co-teachers.

Well, the Catholic Church in Phoenix has excommunicated a nun named Sister Margaret for the sin of saving a woman’s life. Oh, but look:

We finally have a case where the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy is responding forcefully and speedily to allegations of wrongdoing.

But the target isn’t a pedophile priest. Rather, it’ a nun who helped save a woman’ life. Doctors describe her as saintly.

(…)

Sister Margaret was a senior administrator of St. Joseph’ Hospital in Phoenix. A 27-year-old mother of four arrived late last year, in her third month of pregnancy. According to local news reports and accounts from the hospital and some of its staff members, the mother suffered from a serious complication called pulmonary hypertension. That created a high probability that the strain of continuing pregnancy would kill her.

“In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’ life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement. “This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee.”

Sister Margaret was a member of that committee. She declined to discuss the episode with me, but the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated” because she assented to an abortion.

“The mother’ life cannot be preferred over the child’,” the bishop’ communication office elaborated in a statement.

But you have to understand: that fetus might have had a penis.

I really appreciate that the bishop’s office elaborated by explaining that women’s lives aren’t worth all that much to them. It’s a refreshing and surprising moment of honesty from a church which doesn’t usually have a close relationship with the truth.

If you read the whole account, you’ll see that terminating the pregnancy was the ONLY ethical thing to do in that situation, and that furthermore, Sister Margaret was known as the “moral conscience” of that hospital.

This is just another in a long line of examples proving that the idea of the Catholic Church as the moral arbiter of anything is a crying joke, at best.

The entire abhorrent, morally reprobate screed from the Bishop’s office is here. Would that they be so indignant about their child-raping clergy.

(h/t Timothy Beauchamp)