This post has been updated
A number of people have written posts or sent e-mails about the Catholic League’s attack on my blog. Here’s a sampling of what they’re saying:
I checked out the alleged anti-Catholic site and found it to be anything but an anti-catholic site (actually it's a blog; click here for the blogger's response to the false charge of anti-Catholicism).Now the Vatican is picking on Monica Bellucci and the Catholic League on our blogospheric brother Chuck Currie. And why? Because Monica Bellucci spoke up and posed on the cover of a magazine in support of Italian women's reproductive rights and Chuck Currie wrote a quite thoughtful piece about the Vatican's condemnation of feminists and the reactions to that.
Last week I asked a conservative blogger who had anonymously been posting anti-gay comments to come clean with who she was. That post provoked a lot of feedback.
Now this is just plain sad. Chuck Currie is at it again. This time he wonders if I am really real. He's not the first one that has questioned my authenticity. Here's what sad about this all.This world has gotten so evil that people just assume their wickedness is okay. Why isn't it okay? After all, everybodys doing it. Nobody waits until after marriage to have sex anymore. It's popular to move in together before marriage "to see if we can actually get along". And now even those of deviant sexual practices are becoming accepted in our society.
They are so comfy in their practices that when somebody dares to call their gay lifestyle "SIN", they are shocked and hurt. Immediately they resort to calling us hatemongers. It's simple. It doesn't take a lot of thought and it may gain them sympathy in this politically correct world.
But that doesn't change the fact that gay sex is wrong.
I do not believe that just because a person has a different voice than mine, that person ought to be silent. I try to put myself in that person's shoes. If I were a lone liberal in a sea of conservatives, would I want to have myself drowned by their flood? No. Many of Tammy's beliefs are repugnant to me, but I believe she has every right to hold these beliefs, and to share them.
WWP would give up his firstborn child [except alas that he doesn't have one ... at least one that he knows about] to have the sort of web traffic that WWP amigo and fellow blogger Chuck Currie commands. But the current tussle unfolding in Chuck's comments over this particular post gives pause. Remember, nearly all these folks claim a certain carpenter's son as their model. Devil's always in the details, or in this case, in the divisions. WWJD?
A post I wrote on a seminary group in New York set to protest the GOP convention was mentioned on Liberal Oasis. It also got the notice of at least one conservative Christian:
UCC seminarian and liberal blogger Chuck Currie strains credulity as he seeks to distinguish between the religious right and left:If there a difference between the political aims of the religious rights [sic] and the progressive left? Yes, and it is pretty basic. The Southern Baptists, for example, maintain close ties with Republican political candidates, like George W. Bush, and work to elect them. Their efforts often cross the line between separation of church and state and even violate IRS rules governing churches.
This is a rather serious charge for which Currie offers no evidence. Not surprising, really, since there's no evidence to be found.
- Ecumenical Insanity
(Update: I meant to add some evidence to help illustrate my point. As a church leader, I would never tell my congregation how to vote in a partisan political race – though I would offer how I might vote. The religious right doesn’t see a distinction. Take what Jerry Fallwell told CNN yesterday:
…come election day, November 2, I will be casting my vote with my family and 24,000 members of Thomas Road Church, I hope, doing the same.
Churches can take stands on issues, but they shouldn’t be endorsing candidates.)
Finally, John’s Kerry’s endorsement of Missouri’s anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment got me to question his leadership. That made the right-wing happy:
Chuck Currie will be voting for the Kerry-Edwards ticket this November, he informs us on the portside pages of The American Street. Nevertheless Senator Flip Flop was not the United Church of Christ seminarian's first choice—as Kerry keeps reminding him—and Currie apparently retains enough common sense and chutzpah to post this logical query:John Kerry told reporters this week that while he opposed a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage he still doesn’t support gay marriage and would have voted for Missouri’s anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendment. Kerry believes this should be a state’s rights issue.
"But Kerry also personally opposes abortion and yet favors federal protections for the right to choose," Currie continues, concluding, "What is the difference here?"
A good question that deserves a good answer, even though we doubtlessly disagree with the one that Chuck would like to hear . . and won't.
When you make the right-wing happy it is time to question if your message is getting out.
Thanks for reading and all the feedback.
