This clip shows a church in Greenfield, Greensburg, Indiana where a young child gets a hooting, hollering, cheering ovation for getting up in front of the congregation to sing “ain’t no homos in heaven.”
The delighted, amused reaction of the jackass behind the kid is what makes my blood boil. The kids don’t know any better. The rest of the congregation is faceless. But, that guy is clearly proud and happy that the child is using a slur to declare that gay people are excluded from heaven (and presumably condemned to hell.) So much for the pretense about loving the sinner but hating the sin.
Someone said that this does not reflect Christianity. That may well be correct. In fact, my reading of the Bible suggests that the ministry of Jesus does not particularly require any antipathy toward homosexuality. Paul Loebe suggests that the homophobic component of modern Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with the “sexually insecure, homophobic” Apostle Paul. Even if No True Scotsman Christian would act in such a fashion, I think some account has to be taken of the fact that homophobia is frequently expressed in the name of Christianity. Many congregations take the position that gays are God’s children too and, if they are sinful, so is everyone else. God loves them all. If those sorts of voices were more prominent in our culture wars, I suspect incidents like these would strike less of a nerve for me.
Leaving the religious angle to one side, this is an example of a culture teaching its children to hate. I think such teaching is pretty much inevitable when a culture strengthens the “in-group” by defining itself against an “out-group” that is regarded as inferior in some fashion. I don’t know what it looks like from the inside, but to me, as an outsider, it looks like child abuse; breaking a perfectly good kid and teaching him to hate. Laughing and clapping and cheering by way of rewarding the kid for abandoning his good nature.
Update One friend noted that Greensburg was the town where 15 year old Billy Lucas lived before committing suicide after being the victim of anti-gay bullying in 2010.
Another friend noted that it’s inevitable that members of that congregation are or know and love someone who is gay and yet they rise and cheer in solidarity with these cretins.
Shit like this just breaks my heart. So sad.
It’s for this that some parents demand funds to send their children to “private” (read, church) schools.
It’s Apostolic Truth Tabernacle in Greensburg, not Greenfield.
http://www.apostolictruthtabernacle.net/contact_us
Here is the church it happened at: http://www.apostolictruthtabernacle.net/
Thanks. I corrected the location. From the picture on the website, it looks like maybe Pastor Sangle was the man up front cheering on the little boy and having a hearty laugh at the “punch line” of the song.
Why don’t they teach their children about other “abominations” that will keep them from heaven, like shrimp, blended fabrics, pork ribs, or haircuts for cute little 4-year-old boys?
This is why so many of us look askance at people who insist on parading their “Christianity” and smugly asserting their presumed “moral superiority.” Sexual orientation–heterosexual or homosexual–is morally neutral. It is the way people choose to express their sexuality–and their religion–that tells us how moral they are.
So, this particular Christian group believes that homosexuals will not be going to heaven. It is their right to believe that, and for all I know, they may even be correct. I (along with most others that don’t personally have conversations with God) don’t know either way.
The part that gets me is: why would any individual, especially a Christian, want to sing (or have a child sing) a derogative song about others not going to heaven? If homosexuals don’t go to heaven, I am going to predict that murderers don’t go to heaven either, and I wouldn’t want to sing a song about that.
For all you or I know, nobody is going to heaven; homosexual or otherwise. Certainly people can believe that Christians or red heads or toads are going to heaven if they choose. They even have the legal right to sing about it. I have the legal right to tell them they are horrible human beings for teaching a child to sing a song celebrating the exclusion of and slurs against gay people.
If this were a matter of simply teaching that being gay is incorrect behavior, I’d disagree pretty strongly, but I wouldn’t have a visceral reaction. It’s the celebration of exclusion; the meanness of it all that appalls me. They’re happy that some of their fellow humans will not go to heaven. And, make no mistake, whether it’s properly understood as Christian behavior or not, it’s certainly being done in the name of Christianity generally — the song cites Romans and everything.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, but I agree fully with you. It is embarrasing to all Christians that these particular ones are celebrating that gays will not be in heaven.
When my daughter (Catholic) was in high school, one of her best friends was a Mormon. One thing the girls had in common was that most of the other students did not consider them “Christian”. For some reason, though, the kids allowed that a Catholic could maybe go to heaven, but they were sure the Mormon could not. And they kindly told her so. Ironically, this happened in a public school, to which I had sent my daughter so that she would experience more open-mindedness than in a parochial school. My mistake!
I have never had a conversation with a mythical sky entity.
I do not care what a delusional supplicant would impute to it.
But I do know that these people are hate monger and bigots.
Jesse Ventura, the governor of my former state of Minnesota, stated that relgion is a crutch for weak-minded people. It is that, and a pathetic refuge for bigots and racists.
I don’t go at all that far. I have big problems with the culturally religious right in this country; and I don’t personally believe in a god. Some weak minded people probably do use religion as a crutch. But, I’ve run into some powerfully smart people who sincerely believe in God without hurting anyone in the process.
Yeah, there are some very intelligent and strong people that are deeply religous. That does not change the nature of the religion.
I am often confronted with the question of whether religion has done more good than bad in the world. Watching religion collide with biological science, physics, cosmology, human rights and climatology, and the state of Amedican politics and the problems in traditionally secular Muslim nations, I am now convinced it does more damage than good.
You are all misinterpreting the song. He says there “ain’t no homos in heaven”, meaning “there are not no homos in heaven”. After eliminating the double negatives, the boy is clearly saying that there are homos in heaven, and everyone is cheering his positive declaration of an equal chance at heaven for everyone, without regard for sexual preference. Good on ya.
Nice one!
Many religious communities prohibit homosexuality, including some Jewish.
Marycatherine – I would agree that any religion can have its tenets, regardless of how un-mainstream they may be. But to teach a four-year-old to sing (and praise him greatly for it) about hating on some group is despicable. Now you won’t find the video of them singing “no N***ers get to heaven”.. because they know better.
Frankly, I can’t understand the kind of Christianity that seeks to push people away instead of embracing them.
Marycatherine:
I think that you’d find that most Jews these days are very tolerant of homosexuality. Only the most Orthodox and Hasidic movements still seem to include organized hostility to homosexuality. Judaism, like many religions, prohibit many things … and ignore many of those prohibitions. How many Jews cut their hair, eat cheeseburgers or shrimp, or use electricity on Saturday. I know that I do. Add to that the fact that Judaism proudly evolves with the times. For example, a strict interpretation of biblical teaching tells us that any sort of desecration of a body is taboo and that a body that has been desecrtated (such as by a tattoo or by the removal of an organ) cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetary. However, modern thought has come to the realization that organ donation is more important than concerns about desecration of a body. Thus, Jewish theology has continued to evlove. The same, essentially, holds true for homosexuality.
Of course, if you’re the Marycatherine Barton who likes to post anti-Semitic posts elsewhere, then none of this will likely matter to you…
IMO any religious group that doesn’t accord equal respect and ‘standing’ to men, women, and gays, is just as backwards as the church in the video.
I attended a Baptist church as a child, and I don’t remember Brother Leonard either preaching or endorsing this kind of hate from the pulpit. And this was not a “liberal” church by any means. So I guess I’m a bit befuddled about a church that openly encourages hateful language from its youngest members.
Secondly, where is this child’s mother? I’m 37 years old, and I still wouldn’t get away with using that kind of language in front of my mom. It doesn’t have anything to do with her views on sexuality. She understands that the word “homo” is a slur and a vulgarity. And she never even went to Bible college!
Well, look at what’s on the front page of that church’s web site now.
“5/30/12 – The Pastor and members of Apostolic Truth Tabernacle do not condone, teach, or practice hate of any person for any reason. We believe and hope that every person can find true Bible salvation and the mercy and grace of God in their lives. We are a strong advocate of the family unit according to the teachings and precepts found in the Holy Bible. We believe the Holy Bible is the Divinely-inspired Word of God and we will continue to uphold and preach that which is found in scripture.”
The weakest of weak sauce. Dude, your church hates. It’s right there on the video.
Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?
So they believe in selling their daughters into slavery, having polygomous marriages (plus concubines), requiring brothers to marry their widowed sisters-in-law, and so-on and so-forth? Good to know. Because that’s just some of how the Bible views the “family unit”.
Now you’re just going Old Testament on their … tushes.
The Republican Mendacity Methodolgy. Propound racist statements, bald-faced lies, demonstrably false reports and when caught issue duplicitous denials that the mainstreaim media in their attempt to conflate false equivalencies with “balance” will report. The right nows how the mainstream media operates and they seed these lies regularly. And even after the mainstream media has abidcated its dutie and refuse to call out liars as liars, the right-wing media still smugly and disingenously cry bias.
Seems appropriate. After all, unless I’m mistaken that’s where the “homosexuality” (at least the make variety) is described as an abomination.