Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver opposes including the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" in a federal anti-lynching bill.

The U.S. Senate last month unanimously passed a bill that would explicitly make lynching a federal crime. Not everyone, however, is pleased with passage of the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act.

Liberty Counsel, an evangelical nonprofit that opposes gay rights, and its chairman, Mat Staver, are taking issue with the bill’s inclusion of LGBTQ people.

"The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can't stop them from coming the rest of the way in," Staver said in an interview with conservative Christian news outlet OneNewsNow. “This is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler [sic] at some time in the future."

Staver told OneNewsNow that his organization, which has been labeled an anti-LGBTQ “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is lobbying lawmakers in the House to have them remove the bill’s “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” language before taking a vote.

Similarly, the group encouraged Congress in November to remove language about "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" discrimination from a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.

Liberty Counsel did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.

The anti-lynching bill, introduced in June by the Senate’s three black members — Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.— applies to lynchings motivated by a victim’s “actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.”

In a statement released shortly after the bill’s unanimous Senate passage on Dec. 19, Booker called it “an emotional and historic day.”

“For over a century, members of Congress have attempted to pass some version of a bill that would recognize lynching for what it is: a bias-motivated act of terror. And for more than a century, and more than 200 attempts, this body has failed,” Booker stated. “We have righted that wrong and taken corrective action that recognizes this stain on our country’s history.”

The bill notes that at least 4,742 people, mainly African-Americans, were reportedly lynched in the U.S. from 1882 to 1968.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/...QhInJvrjzodwvAw

Well, I guess I thought lynching was illegal to begin with - at least in the last while?


Maybe I'm not up on the term. Lynching is killing someone. Murder is illegal. What am I missing?

I think this is so they can treat them as hate crimes with much stiffer penalties... ??? But I'm like you, it's already illegal.

I think you're missing that an extremist evangelical was targeting a particular group from being included from the law.

Okay. You got 2 buzzwords in there. Good for you.

Lynching is murder. Murder is illegal. Really, what did I miss. Was he successful in his attempt at removing gays?

Then why didn't they try and remove every group listed in the law?

Come on arch, you can do better than that can't you?

Authorities 'looking into' pastor's church sermon calling for execution of LGBTQ people

A controversial sermon by a Tennessee church pastor, who is also a detective in the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, calling for the execution of LGBTQ people has prompted authorities to further investigate.

All Scripture Baptist Church pastor Grayson Fritts, who earlier this month was taken off active duty with the sheriff's department as he waits for a county buyout offer, said in an hourlong sermon that members of the LGBTQ community should be “put to death,” referring to them as “freaks” and “animals,” according to CBS 8 WVLT.

"Here's how it should work. It shouldn't work when we go out and we enforce the laws, because the Bible says the powers that be are ordained of God and God has instilled the power of civil government to send the police in 2019 out to these LGBT freaks and arrest them," Fritts said in his June 2 sermon.

"Have a trial for them, and if they are convicted then they are to be put to death ... do you understand that? It's a capital crime to be carried out by our government."

Fritts also made specific reference to LGBTQ Pride parades, saying, “All the Pride parades, man, hey, call the riot teams, we got a bunch of 'em, get the paddy wagon out here, we got a bunch of 'em going to jail. We got a bunch of them we're gonna get convicted because they've got their Pride junk on and they're professing what they are, they're a filthy animal."

The Hill has reached out to the All Scripture Baptist Church for Comment.

The full sermon was posted by the church to YouTube and Facebook.

The sermon sparked an investigation by the Knox County District Attorney's Office, which put out a statement saying it is further looking into the incident and will take action accordingly.

The Knox County Sheriff’s Office also put out a statement after reports surfaced that Fritts worked in the office. The statement said he is on paid leave until his buy-out request is processed.

“I want to be very clear that it is my responsibility to ensure equal protection to ALL citizens of Knox County, Tennessee under the law, my oath and the United States Constitution without discrimination or hesitation. Rest assured that I have and will continue to do so," Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler said in the statement.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch...DBahN8.facebook

I have no damn idea. Lest you forget, I have skin in this game.

But, isn't lynching illegal, no matter what? I mean, murder is illegal. Can you answer, yes or no: Is murder illegal?

Or, is lynching illegal?

Thanks for your yes or no answer.

Take out the LGBTQ's as long as you take out evangelicals with them. Then everyone is happy and lynching is still lynching, illegal in all 50 states or 57 states if your an Obama fan.

Saying they get stiffer penalties is silly, since it's murder in the first degree. Unless you say you didn't mean to kill them with the rope you just happen to have in your pocket. They will generally get life without parole or killing you kindly. I'm not sure how much stiffer they can legally get.

Why do we need the names of any groups in what is basically an anti murder law?

Why do we even need another anti murder law?

What a waste of time. Murder is already illegal. Hanging someone to watch them strangle should already get the prep the same treatment. What's next? The justice for throat slashing bill?

idk....

lynching is an awful way to go....probably one of the worst....just thinking about a group of men corralling you, putting a rope around your neck and yanking you up off the ground to seal your fate....

I couldn't imagine the terrible suffering as you fight to get away only to slowly being overcome and strangled brutally slow....

I'm sure fighting for your life is always traumatic.....but I think lynching is kind of on its own level, Mainly because there are usually a number of perpetrators, all engaged in the act to take a mans life, and there is a kind of symbolism behind it, as it harkens back to a very unsettling time in America's history....

And despite the common sense idea that murder is murder is murder....unfortunately our penal code has loads of little fine print defining the act and then breaking it down based on a ton of variables....

I tend to think we have way too many laws as it is.....but, I guess being a law-maker, you can find just about anything to add a little asterisk to the current policy, and make another law....

Hanging is just one way a person can be lynched.
Human beings are incredibly inventive when it comes to cruelty.

No doubt lynching is a miserable way to die.

But it's no where near the worst way.

Man has devised horrible ways to die.

The worst I ever read about was called "boxes".

STOP READING NOW IF YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO HERE ABOUT "boxes". If you read the rest of this post, don't moan and groan about "I really didn't need to read that." This is an historical fact.

(ya right, like anybody is gonna stop reading now.)

A condemned man was forced to eat a bunch of honey to eventually cause diarrhea. He was then put into a wooden box with holes that restrained his arms and legs where there were a lot of biting flies.

I'll stop there. Just to say he was eventually eaten alive from the inside out over several days by maggots entering through his...




NOOOooooo......

I'll take the "boxes", please...

We need a Federal Law against that!

Bobby Goldsboro says we need a federal law against Rocky’s posts.

Maybe a Federal Law against Rocky!

I need a federal law against that song.

In an episode of 'Married With Children' almost 30 years ago, Al Bundy referred to it as "That Bobby Goldsboro sphincter-lock, 'Honey'"

And Clemmy, I miss you and I’m bein’ good...

grrrrrrr...

And, from what I could find, there hasn't been a lynching in almost 40 years... not sure what the purpose of this is..

They should probably including burning witches in this bill.

Seems largely symbolic to me.

Mat Staver is

Yes lynching is murder. But you can’t really prosecute a group like the KKK for lynching a person. I’m assuming that a group like the KKK can now come under fire as an international terror group and certain people won’t like that one little bit. Hence some of the replies here.

I don't know that's driving some of the replies. I just think people look at the surface of things but are rarely willing to dive into the water.

Why, what would people find in the water that can't be seen from the surface?

When the water is muddied you can't see much below the surface. And it's very muddy.

Ok, best clarity from the original post is this.

It's not just a crime but making it a "federal" crime, otherwise crimes that don't take place in more than one state aren't really federal problems.

2nd, it appears the evangelical group thinks signaling out LGTBQ in an anti lynching bill to become a federal crime is just an end around to later make any words spoken out against LGTBQ as a federal crime punishing free speech, on account of

either you support the gays, or , it's a crime. And this would be the thing the group is trying to stop,

because, no mistake, there is an assault on Christian Thinking, and it's been ongoing.

God isn't going to be mocked, and Homosexuality won't go forever unpunished.

Repent! before it's too late.

Was this supposed to be in purple? I hope so.

And when you say "God" which are you referring to? Buddha? Allah? Shiva? ... or maybe Zeus or Poseidon or Athena - or Jupiter and Mars ? I mean it's really not that long ago in the history of the world that mankind had a different set of gods to worship. We have more now - yet somehow based on which country we are born we get to claim a God and announce all others are false and make outlandish claims.

Here’s an interesting read. One which I’m sure will make some hateful ‘Christian’ heads explode.
https://www.forgeonline.org/blog/2019/3/...nRg8gbEoVyl5PCo

THE WORD ARSENOKOITAI SHOWS UP IN TWO DIFFERENT VERSES IN THE BIBLE, BUT IT WAS NOT TRANSLATED TO MEAN HOMOSEXUAL UNTIL 1946.

WE GOT TO SIT DOWN WITH ED OXFORD AT HIS HOME IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA AND TALK ABOUT THIS QUESTION.

YOU HAVE BEEN PART OF A RESEARCH TEAM THAT IS SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE DECISION WAS MADE TO PUT THE WORD HOMOSEXUAL IN THE BIBLE. IS THAT TRUE?

Ed: Yes. It first showed up in the RSV translation. So before figuring out why they decided to use that word in the RSV translation (which is outlined in my upcoming book with Kathy Baldock, Forging a Sacred Weapon: How the Bible Became Anti-Gay) I wanted to see how other cultures and translations treated the same verses when they were translated during the Reformation 500 years ago. So I started collecting old Bibles in French, German, Irish, Gaelic, Czechoslovakian, Polish… you name it. Now I’ve got most European major languages that I’ve collected over time. Anyway, I had a German friend come back to town and I asked if he could help me with some passages in one of my German Bibles from the 1800s. So we went to Leviticus 18:22 and he’s translating it for me word for word. In the English where it says “Man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination,” the German version says “Man shall not lie with young boys as he does with women, for it is an abomination.” I said, “What?! Are you sure?” He said, “Yes!” Then we went to Leviticus 20:13— same thing, “Young boys.” So we went to 1 Corinthians to see how they translated arsenokoitai (original greek word) and instead of homosexuals it said, “Boy molesters will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

I then grabbed my facsimile copy of Martin Luther’s original German translation from 1534. My friend is reading through it for me and he says, “Ed, this says the same thing!” They use the word knabenschander. Knaben is boy, schander is molester. This word “boy molesters” carried through the next several centuries of German Bible translations. Knabenschander is also in 1 Timothy 1:10. So the interesting thing is, I asked if they ever changed the word arsenokoitai to homosexual in modern translations. So my friend found it and told me, “The first time homosexual appears in a German translation is 1983.” To me that was a little suspect because of what was happening in culture in the 1970s. Also because the Germans were the ones who created the word homosexual in 1862, they had all the history, research, and understanding to change it if they saw fit; however, they did not change it until 1983. If anyone was going to put the word in the Bible, the Germans should have been the first to do it!
IMG_2788.jpeg
As I was talking with my friends I said, “I wonder why not until 1983? Was their influence from America?” So we had our German connection look into it again and it turns out that the company, Biblica, who owns the NIV version, paid for this 1983 German version. Thus it was Americans who paid for it! In 1983 Germany didn’t have enough of a Christian population to warrant the cost of a new Bible translation, because it’s not cheap. So an American company paid for it and influenced the decision, resulting in the word homosexual entering the German Bible for the first time in history. So, I say, I think there is a “gay agenda” after all!

I also have a 1674 Swedish version and an 1830 Norwegian version of the Bible. I asked one of my friends, who was attending Fuller seminary and is fluent in both Swedish and Norwegian, to look at these verses for me. So we met at a coffee shop in Pasadena with my old Bibles. (She didn’t really know why I was asking.) Just like reading an old English Bible, it’s not easy to read. The letters are a little bit funky, the spelling is a little bit different. So she’s going through it carefully, and then her face comes up, “Do you know what this says?!” and I said, “No! That’s why you are here!” She said, “It says boy abusers, boy molesters.” And, in fact, in the Norwegian version, she pointed out, that if you were to line up boys of different ages and say which group of these boys is this referring to, it would be the 8-12 year old group. That was how the linguistics were working and it was obviously referring the pederasty, not homosexuality!

So then I started thinking that of 4 of the 6 clobber passages, all these nations and translations were referring to pederasty, and not what we would call homosexuality today.

Q:HOW DID THE TRANSLATION TEAMS WORK?

Well, they didn’t operate out of a vacuum when they translated something. They used data available to them from very old libraries. Last week at the Huntington Library I found a Lexicon from 1483. I looked up arsenokoitai and it gave the Latin equivalent, paedico and praedico. If you look those up it means pederasty, or knabenschander, (boy molester, in German.) 1483 is the time Martin Luther was born, so when he was running for his life translating the Bible and carrying his books, he would have used such a Lexicon. It was the Lexicon of his time. This Lexicon used information from the previous 1000 years, including data passed down from the Church Fathers.

SO THERE IS HISTORICAL TRADITION TO SHOW THAT THESE VERSES AREN’T RELATING TO HOMOSEXUALITY?

Yes. Sometimes I’m frustrated when I talk to pastors today and they say, “Well I believe the historical tradition surrounding these verses.” My response is, “Which Bible do you use? Oh, you mean the past 50 years of tradition. My Bible is 500 years old.” The ignorance on their part and the arrogance on their part, “2000 years of history!” It just doesn’t line up. The truth needs to come out. Please don’t talk to me about history when you don’t even know history. That’s why I’m collecting these Bibles, to show the truth of history.

YES! MY BROTHER, WHO IS A PASTOR, ALSO TOLD ME THE SAME THING: THAT EVERY SECTOR OF THE CHURCH HAS SEEN SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS AS SINFUL FOR 2,000 YEARS. BUT THE MORE I READ AND STUDY THOUGH, THE MORE I JUST DON’T SEE THIS BEING TRUE.

WHAT WAS USED BEFORE HOMOSEXUAL SHOWED UP IN THE RSV VERSION?

King James Version triumphed the land and they used the phrase, “Abusers of themselves with mankind” for arsenokoitai. If you asked people during that time no one really wanted to tackle it. So that’s why I’m collecting Bibles, Biblical commentaries and lexicons, in order to show how theologians proceed these passages.

Q: IN YOUR OPINION, HOW WOULD THE CHURCH BE DIFFERENT IF THE RSV DIDN’T CHANGE ARESENKOITAI AND MALAKOI TO HOMOESEXUAL IN 1946 ?

In my opinion, if the RSV did not use the word homosexual in first Corinthians 6:9, and instead would have spent years in proper research to understand homosexuality and to really dig into the historical contextualization, I think translators would have ended up with a more accurate translation of the abusive nature intended by this word. I think we could have avoided the horrible damage that was done from pulpits all across America, and ultimately other parts of the world.

Q: AND DO YOU THINK YOUR LIFE WOULD HAVE GONE DIFFERENTLY AS A RESULT?

Yes, absolutely! I think my life would have been starkly different if the translation would have been translated with the accurate historical contextualization - especially within my own family, since they rely so heavily on the English translation and put a lot of faith in the translators for the final product in English. Since they haven’t studied Greek or Hebrew, they have no concept of challenging a translation, and any potential errors that may have occurred during translation. Therefore, they are unable to think beyond the English translation in front of them.

Q: BASED ON YOUR RESEARCH, WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU HAVE FOR LGBTQ CHRISTIANS TODAY?

My advice to LGBTQ Christians today would be three things:

1.) As difficult as it may be, try to extend grace and patience to the Church. The vast majority of pastors in America have not done their due diligence on this topic, so we can’t expect them to be any further along than they are currently. In the same way that God has extended grace and patience with us when we sin, we need to extend grace and patience toward others regarding their error on this topic. Bitterness will only manage to create further damage.

2.) Seek out other LGBTQ Christians who have already done their due diligence on this topic and reached a point of peace between their sexuality and God. We can learn a lot from others who are a little further up the trail.

3.) Often remind yourself that this mess is not caused by God, but instead is the result of people who have been entrusted with free will.

Seek help.

THE GAYS ARE COMING TO EAT OUR CHILDREN

Stop. You shouldn't make fun of him, he may be seriously ill.

How christian of them

Interesting.

That's a non-answer.

Gee - fancy that! One of my single biggest issues with any organized religion - the idea that fallible man can interpret and hand down from generation to generation and finally write the word of God into text and not entirely screw it up. Simply not possible.... Add to that the plethora of religions all claiming to be the one true religion ... I understand why people want to believe - have no problem when they do believe - have a massive problem with people that advocate "punishing" others for not conforming to their misconstrued doctrines.

Portland, thank you, sincerely, for providing some very thought provoking insight into this otherwise mocking [censored] show.

Pretty much in the same fashion as your previous post.

My previous post was a question.... so I guess in some respect, you are right, it was a non-answer.

I knew it!

Lynching is illegal as it's murder, but extra crimes are added because if by going by the letter of the law, not everyone in a lynch mob is a murderer. Many would be charged with accessory to murder. That is at most a 15 year sentence. A hate crime that involves kidnapping or murder is a life sentence. That is why hate crimes are good protections for marginalized communities. we

I actually gave you the perfect answer to this question. If the water is clear you can see below the water. If the water has been muddied you would have to go below the surface to find things you can't see or find from the surface.

That's why they have to send divers into the water to find bodies that have drowned.

I will give this one more go... you said:



I asked you what I would see if I dove into the water or looked below the surface...

And you have turned it into a discussion about scuba diving...

So... one last time... as it relates to lynching gays and blacks, what is below the surface that people aren't seeing?

Well that's nothing close to the way you worded the question. But I thought the answer was obvious. Let's look at who was to be protected.



What should have been so obvious, yet many of the responses refused to address, (even those with "skin in the game"), is that once again the only group this evangelical group opposed as being in the bill were LGBTQ people.

They weren't opposing the bill itself. Instead, they targeted a particular subset of people who they seem to feel do not deserve equal protection. Yet the surface replied that it shouldn't be a law. Somehow it was glossed over what the intent of this group was making as their target.

And to a larger degree, we see it on here all the time. We see it on social media all the time. We see it coming from politicians all the time. There will be an actual problem that needs to be addressed. But rather than look deeply into such problems they lash out at one another. They distract and use a bait and switch con game to place the focus elsewhere rather than actually admit and address an issue.

Sometimes, often times actually, we have to look far beyond the noise to see what is actually going on and what can be done to solve it.

Did I really need to discuss it?

It appears not. I would however have thought since you did comment in the thread this may have been one thing that would have stood out to you. But once again, it appears not.

Darn right.

then why aren't you advocating for all of the groups that are NOT included, if your intention is to argue based on who deserves "equal protection"?

Yeah, that's kind of skirting the issue. But that's common practice here.

And that's avoiding the question. Which is also common practice here.

If it's about "equal protection" then why are there groups not included?

Because the evidence says the group you’re referring to is typically the ones in control doing the discriminating.

Equality always feels like oppression to those in control.

If actual sentencing reflected the severity of the crime, we wouldn't need the extra bills that basically say murder is illegal. Besides, the most recent recorded lynching was 1981. Why are they pushing this bill?

You haven't even addressed the my entire last post to you. That's called "bait and switch". A common practice.

You never even attempted to address the fact that they wished to exclude gay people from the bill. So I'll tell you what, you address my post to you first, since that's the order they were posted in, then I'll address yours.

Let's try this again, shall we?



Then we get to exactly what you were trying to do. Thanks for giving the perfect example of it BTW

Maybe, I don't feel oppressed.

So like you trying to muddy this up with your post about some equivalence with the abortion laws?


Because they view LGBTQ as sinful behavior, they view it as a choice.. unlike your national origin or your race, etc.. and they have always fought against including them in "protected class" recognition. So this seems to be pretty much in keeping with their previous efforts.

You do understand they used religion as a reason to promote slavery and racist laws as well, right?

Of course.

I also understand that if I had used Rosa Parks and the Greensboro sit in folks in an analogy with a well-off white attorney from suburban Denver in 2019, your buddies on the left would have pounced on that like flies on horse crap... but you take folks who risk their lives, the safety of their community and their family, jail time... and compare that to an attorney who can't get the cake they want for their perfectly legal gender transition.... and none of them say a word... odd.

And you haven’t hid them away?

It's because while the risk factor may be different, the fight against discrimination is the same. In every case, they sought it out and opposed it. In every case religion was used to inflict that discrimination.

That's what 'out of the closet' means.

Mississippi wedding venue cites 'Christian belief' in refusing interracial couple


JACKSON, Miss. – An interracial Mississippi couple was turned away from a wedding venue with the owner citing her refusal based on her "Christian beliefs." The owner of the venue has since apologized, saying she was raised to believe interracial marriage was an "understood subject."

In a now-viral video posted on Facebook on Saturday by LaKambria Welch, an unidentified woman can be heard saying, in part, "we don't do gay weddings or mixed-raced (weddings) because of our Christian race, I mean our Christian belief."

With the 2016 passage of House Bill 1523, Mississippi businesses are allowed to deny services based on their religious views. The bill also prevents government intervention when churches or businesses act "based upon or in a manner consistent with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction." The bill was primarily directed at sexual orientation and same-sex marriage. Race was not a part of the legislation.

According to multiple media reports, Welch went to Boone's Camp Event Hall in Booneville on Saturday with her mother after finding out the venue would not host her brother, who is black, and his fianceé, who is white.

In the video, Welch begins to ask the woman, "Well, we're Christians as well so, what in the Bible tells you that," but the woman interrupts her, saying, "Well, I just don't want to argue my faith.


"We just don't participate, we just choose not to," she said.

Welch could not be reached for comment Tuesday, and the video is no longer publicly available on her Facebook page. Calls to Boone's Camp Event Hall went unanswered. According to the Mississippi Secretary of State's website, the space is registered to David and Donna Russell of Booneville.

Boone's Camp Event Hall has since deleted their Facebook page but not before they posted an apology and said, after researching, they found that the woman's views on interracial marriage were unfounded.

In two screenshots obtained by WCBI-TV in Columbus, Mississippi, the event hall posted an apology, saying in part, "as a child growing up in Mississippi, our racial boundaries that were unstated were that of staying in your own race."

In the post, the woman said her husband asked her where the Bible mentioned "biracial relationships." After spending the weekend looking for it and consulting her pastor, the woman said she realized her beliefs were "incorrect," saying, "As my Bible reads, there are two requirements for marriage and race has nothing to do with either!"

The woman then apologized for her "ignorance in not knowing the truth."

"My intent was never of racism but to stand firm on what I 'assumed' was right concerning marriage," she said.

It was not clear whether the woman had reached out to Welch or the couple to apologize.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati...ple/2198769001/

hope your girl aint black or hispanic, Jules! then you're double screwed!

If she were a transgender black or hispanic girl I might hit the trifecta!

It amazes me how many people use Christianity to spread hate... don't think jesus ever said anything against interracial marriage or even homosexuality... last I checked jesus said to love God and love our neighbors....

They do and that was the biggest reason why I turned away from religion.

On the other hand, I think that are a huge number of people who like to report the negative stories of religious people while ignoring the positive stories. Thus, in turn...........those types of people lose my support, as well.

I think it is best to judge individuals as individuals rather than assigning labels to entire groups of people. I may have said that one to a thousand times before. LOL

I agree... there are many great 'religious' stories out there...

I feel like I'm s fairly strong Christian... still learning and by no means perfect.... I get so frustrated by religious nuts who hide behind religion while professing hate...

Not sure if my opinion means anything to you, jay............but, for what it's worth.......I think you are a good dude. You seem sincere. I don't agree w/all your takes, but I think you come from a good place.

In my opinion, there are religious folks who give religion a bad name. However, I think there are a ton of really good religious folks who make the world a better place.

I am not religious. However, I would never bash a person for being part of that sect. I think you should never be embarrassed or discouraged by the words of people hating on religious folks such as yourself and just keep on "keeping on" trying to live a better life. Don't let the haters get you down, bro. I have a lot of respect for guys like you.

I have faith in God, and believe that there are prophets.

Religion is another subject. It creates as many problems as it solves.

You are not alone, my friend.
We are legion... and a good many of us aren't Sunday-go-to-meetin' type folk. But we are here.


Speaking truthfully, I'd actually seek out a church with slogans like this on its front lawn:

Yup, it is interesting

I agree that many who are religious and many who belong to a religion are good people and that religion does a lot of good in the world.

But when it comes to the individual as you described it, I think by and large that holds true. Sometimes not so much when it comes to religion.

You can look at the teachings of ones religion to tell you the story. Does the religion they follow preach exclusion of homosexuals? Does it teach denying women reproductive rights? There are other topics I could touch on but I think you get my meaning here.

I was raised to believe that what a person says isn't nearly as important as what a person does. When a person contributes, supports and joins in with a religion that professes and spreads such messages, I feel that speaks louder than anything else.