Maybe -- if deity exists -- s/he also suffers from bloodthirsty fatwas like this one just as much as anyone else here who's reasonably humane? [shrug]

G Riggs

Well put, but forgive my presumption in proferring an alternate version:

"A morality so blatantly divorced from human concerns, bearing no relation to what actual people need or want, but based solely on the whims of this God fellow, is bound to cause great suffering wherever it's applied; and the accountability for this suffering belongs to the deity cited."

If you deny someone a proper funeral because they are gay, why don't they deny murderers, adulterers, and any other 'sinful' thing that the bible spouts about.

Pork eaters?

Perhaps I'm naive, but is this a common occurrence at conservative religious congregations? Do they routinely exploit families' grief as a way to proselytize for their own beliefs? It strikes me as tasteless and insensitive in the extreme to use a death in the community as an occasion for advertising.

I am glad you wrote about this, because it's something that has been bothering me quite a bit of late. I refer to the way that some religious folk never seem to miss an opportunity to insert their faith into other people's grief - whether or not asked for. It is indeed an unseemly type of advertising.

Last week in my area, there was an unfortunate murder/suicide involving a mother and her two children. The mother apparently had some type of dementia brought on by MS. Of course the next day, someone had implanted three white crosses in front of the house where the incident had taken place. The victims were immigrants and possibly not even Christian, and yet someone apparently felt the need and entitlement to use the situation to stick crosses in the victim's front yard. Is this the same god that allowed the mother to contract MS, I wonder?

These type of incidents bring to mind the stories I have read about the religious who pester unbelievers on their deathbeds - it really is ghoulish. Then claiming false deathbed conversion to prop up their faith. I have had to tell my wife that should I pass away before her, these people should not be allowed to turn my death into an advertisement for their faith. It really is unfortunate I should have to leave that instruction, but these people are shameless.

But yes, I've been to funerals where the deceased is made out to be more religious than they were. I think it's fairly common.

Mitchell and Webb humourously lampooned this fact in Peep Show where a guy is given a humanist funeral much to the annoyance of his nephew who witnessed his dead bed conversion to Christianity.

When I tried the Catholic church later in my life, I found the altars that were placed directly in front of the pews preferable to the ones of the four square churches that I attended as a youth. The four square ones were at the front of all the pews, but beneath the preacher's podium.

I remember being taught that any sin was punishable by hellfire, so you might as well be a murderer and thief if you sinned by lusting after women--- obviously this teaching is in direct conflict with actual social evolution and therefore was without substance--- but it was repeated often in sermons.

I am often amazed at how much hatred flows from the religious. What a sad story.

OMGF,

I think that you would be happy to know that last week at the Bible study my wife and I host at our house, while addressing the topic of racism, I also brought up the problem of discrimination against homosexuals and highlighted the fact that we need to be sensetive to them as people.

Cheers,

Matt

Good. Of course, it's a little disappointing that you actually have to tell people to respect other human beings and be sensitive to them as people. But, I guess one has to take the first step somehow.

Just please tell me that you didn't use the "It's all right to be gay, just don't act on it" line.