Name and Shame
May. 15th, 2009 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnOver the past couple of weeks there's been a bit of (as we say) a kerfuffle in the Church of Scotland. I first heard about it through ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
diarytypething and can't really summarize it better than she did - basically the situation is that an openly gay minister was democratically elected to be the leader of a church in Aberdeen, causing an uprising among the few people who didn't agree, and the result of their complaint is that an online petition (because those always work) from the wider church has gone up in an effort to overturn the decision by getting signatures from people who have nothing to do with the congregation that elected him.
Unfortunately it seems that the list is, firstly, large, and second, really quite efficiently moderated, and my own entry, from a Jim McBastard from the Church of the Holy Bigots in Texas, 100 years ago, lasted all of four minutes before it disappeared. But simultaneously usefully and depressingly, it does mean that we can check ze list of the real entries to see who supports the cause. After some tentative poking at names that immediately came to mind, hoping at each keypress that Firefox's search bar would turn red and eventually being relieved, I thought I was safe, but was then extremely disappointed to find that Manson Merchant was in at number #998.If he'd just waited a couple of minutes he could have got the thousandth. I knew him as a young-at-heart minister who was very popular with the youth group (for an example of his mentality, his method of punishment for having caught a girl in the boys' dormitory during a trip away was, after a mock trial in which I not-at-all-deliberately failed as her defence lawyer, to take her outside and 'execute' her via the medium of a large barrage of shaving cream pies), so to see that he seems to subscribe to this rather backward view was surprising to say the least.
Now, I don't believe that everyone on the list is... wrong, automatically, because a development like this would be difficult as it's quite a large move for the church away from some rules and values that it's meant to have held for a couple of thousand years. But when I was younger, our church was always more about its own community and acceptance of people (and any wrongness in my head a few years ago was never taught to me and was purely my own fault), and at that time I was completely unaware of problems like this being caused by somebody writing down what might have been some reasonably good health ideas a few millenniums ago. I've heard many suggestions for possible mistakes in translation and misinterpretations or loopholes in Leviticus before, and some of them are plausible, but... I think for the most part it's a lot of work to try and dodge around it rather than just admitting that we're oppressing people for no reason other than it says it in this irrelevant and obsolete book of laws (though I admit I wouldn't exactly say that on top of a hill under a tree in a thunderstorm, or anything).
Still, later this month as the unfairness of being able to have a decision overturned like this becomes clear, maybe it'll cause a huge split in the church whichever way it turns out. That would be quite exciting.
And as this post only contains borrowed content anyway, here's the most brief yet accurate summary of Top Gear ever, fromstubbleupdate. Cheer up.
diarytypething and can't really summarize it better than she did - basically the situation is that an openly gay minister was democratically elected to be the leader of a church in Aberdeen, causing an uprising among the few people who didn't agree, and the result of their complaint is that an online petition (because those always work) from the wider church has gone up in an effort to overturn the decision by getting signatures from people who have nothing to do with the congregation that elected him.Unfortunately it seems that the list is, firstly, large, and second, really quite efficiently moderated, and my own entry, from a Jim McBastard from the Church of the Holy Bigots in Texas, 100 years ago, lasted all of four minutes before it disappeared. But simultaneously usefully and depressingly, it does mean that we can check ze list of the real entries to see who supports the cause. After some tentative poking at names that immediately came to mind, hoping at each keypress that Firefox's search bar would turn red and eventually being relieved, I thought I was safe, but was then extremely disappointed to find that Manson Merchant was in at number #998.
Now, I don't believe that everyone on the list is... wrong, automatically, because a development like this would be difficult as it's quite a large move for the church away from some rules and values that it's meant to have held for a couple of thousand years. But when I was younger, our church was always more about its own community and acceptance of people (and any wrongness in my head a few years ago was never taught to me and was purely my own fault), and at that time I was completely unaware of problems like this being caused by somebody writing down what might have been some reasonably good health ideas a few millenniums ago. I've heard many suggestions for possible mistakes in translation and misinterpretations or loopholes in Leviticus before, and some of them are plausible, but... I think for the most part it's a lot of work to try and dodge around it rather than just admitting that we're oppressing people for no reason other than it says it in this irrelevant and obsolete book of laws (though I admit I wouldn't exactly say that on top of a hill under a tree in a thunderstorm, or anything).
Still, later this month as the unfairness of being able to have a decision overturned like this becomes clear, maybe it'll cause a huge split in the church whichever way it turns out. That would be quite exciting.
And as this post only contains borrowed content anyway, here's the most brief yet accurate summary of Top Gear ever, from
stubbleupdate. Cheer up.
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Date: 2009-05-15 08:31 pm (UTC)On the list so far: Graham Bruno - who's my oldest and one of my closest friends... This is a bit upsetting.
Oh, Damn... Beth, my little sister. Fiona, my other little sister. [Actually, somewhat reassuringly, Beth's fiancee, Pete, isn't on there. As the son of a Minister, and... well, they're getting married in August, got engaged in March. She will be 21 in a week.] Fi's ex is. [The one of my exes who might've been isn't. Yet.] One of Fiona's schoolfriends. Graham's little sister.
One name who I recognise from my old church: one of the elders, who left when he left his wife and kids. He always seemed decent. His son's a nice guy. (Actually, he's on there too. Damn.) A very atypical thing for there. Pleased to see neither of our pastors, nor the best speaker (who's a lecturer in Divinity at Aberdeen) on there. It's a nice place, and very non-dogmatic and a really really good church.
One other person from there is on. It's one old lady ( my driving instructor's wife), my old best friend and my sister, who're signing from my church.
I'm lucky my parents aren't on there - I don't know if my mum would sign it, and although my dad wouldn't like it, I'd like to think he might at least not sign it because CoS is nothing to do with our family. I hope I'm wrong. My parents, have really strong religious believes, but if nothing, they think about them a lot, and genuinely care and believe. And, you know, my dad tends to dislike other denominations because of actual differences in beliefs, which is the best reason to. (No, really.) Though that might be reading too much into his distaste for Catholic ceremonies
My sisters don't surprise me. Beth, maybe. She's not that brigh, but one of the kindest people in the world. Fi's young, with all the attached stupidity, and studying medicine.
Graham... well, that hurts a little. A lot. Because, you know, argh... in primary school, we used to just talk all the time. And we still do talk all the time, and can, he's about the easiest person in the world. And he's a committed Tory, and studied politics. And he's a really good guy - I know him as well as anyone, have done for 18 years, and I'm pretty sure he's never hurt anyone. He's always been great to me, even though I'm a rubbish friend too much. I mean, despite being a signed up member of the Tory party, he cares about people, and is really compassionate. He's the only Tory I've ever met who's suggested a policy that actually seems to improve things for people worse off.
I've spent so long gaming with him; I've got a card of sympathy for my Granny's death from him on my desk. I've got an incredibly nice and cool well-designed chess/draughts/backgammon set he found in Istanbul a couple of years back and gave me for my 21st. His family and mine have spent the last ...10ish +(?) Christmas days together. I love him like a brother who does only good things and lives a long way away so I don't have to see and fight with often. AND has a birthday on a holiday, so I can never forget it, a useful quality for faux-family members. Plus he never forgets mine, because it's the day before his sister's. But I'm getting side-tracked. I guess the reason it really hurts is that I didn't know he feels that way. I thought he was smarter. But he's a traditionalist through and through. It's sad, too, because he, like my parents, is a strong Christian who's very active in a supportive church, entirely out of choice. Like my parents, it's not the way he was raised - he chooses faith, from parents who're not into church. And he's never been afraid to make fun of himself.
Now... The statement itself. A practicing gay minister would be a huge precedent: I don't think it's at all wrong for anyone who's a member of the Church of Scotland to protest, in that they believe that their church shouldn't let people in homosexual relationships be pastors. And I've got nothing to do with the CoS.
Anyone else, well, it's not really anything to do with them. And I'm disappointed in the people with those beliefs, especially the many who I know, truly, to be kind, generous, compassionate loving human beings, who put everyone before themselves.
Curiously, I don't know why it bothers me so much. But it does.
I should probably mention this to them, shouldn't I?