Southern Baptist stock photo makes pornography seem glorious

Southern Baptist stock photo makes pornography seem glorious October 7, 2013

The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention is charged with lobbying on behalf of the denomination on 12 “core” issues: adoption, Christian citizenship, gambling, homosexuality, human trafficking, hunger, life, persecution, pornography, race, religious liberty and contraception insurance. (For, for, against, against, against, against, for, against, against, for?, for and against — respectively.)

Their “Issues at a Glance” page takes you to explanations of the commission’s perspective on each of these, with a bit of stock photo art accompanying each subject as a kind of representative icon.

I spent 10 years as the online copy editor for a newspaper, so I appreciate the challenge here in finding art to illustrate abstract ideas. It’s not easy. Part of that challenge, though, involves selecting art that isn’t ambiguous and, therefore, inadvertently hilarious.

Consider, for example, the ERLC’s choice of art for the category of “homosexuality”:

Are they confusing gayness with voyeurism? Because those are, you know, not the same. And I didn’t think that Southern Baptists opposition to LGBT people’s civil rights was based on the fear that gay men might be lurking in the hedges, peeping in at good Christian people.

Or maybe the guy in the photo is supposed to be a good Southern Baptist, looking on with holy fascination at those poor sinners trapped in their sinful lifestyle. Or maybe that’s not the blinds of a window, but rather the slats of the closet Southern Baptists want to keep this poor man trapped in. Or …

No, I’m all out of guesses, and I still have no idea what that photo is supposed to mean.

But it’s still not as laughably inappropriate as this photo from the ERLC’s “Issues” page:

I think this photo is supposed to portray a man seeking, and receiving, divine deliverance from bondage to lust. The sunburst is, I think, meant to represent his rapturous release … from sin.

And that might have worked if the man were raising both his hands in prayerful ecstasy.


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