Can any Jesus-ite of any sort imagine the following conversation between Robert Gates, the president of the BSA, and Jesus, the savior of the world?<\/p>\n
GATES: The BSA is no longer going to tell gay people they can\u2019t participate.<\/p>\n
JESUS: That is it!\u00a0<\/i>I\u2019m going to start my own<\/i> club, and it\u2019s not going to have gay people in it, and it\u2019s going to be fifty times better than your <\/i>stupid club. I never wanted to be in your dumb old club, anyway. My<\/i> club\u2019s going to have ice cream. And Clif bars. And we\u2019re<\/em> going to have a secret club house that you<\/i> can\u2019t find. So, neener<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nMy problem with the LDS church\u2019s threat to take its ball and go home over the BSA\u2019s 45-12, not-at-all-close vote to allow gay people to participate in scouting is this: even if we start from the premise that gay-being or gay-doing is immoral, I nevertheless can\u2019t<\/i> believe that the Jesus who hung with lepers, told adulteresses not to sweat it too much, and insisted that the last will be first, would think badly of the BSA\u2019s newly-formalized charity.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m not at all sold on the gay-is-immoral premise, anyway. \u00a0I find it equally impossible to believe that the Jesus whose father\u2019s house has many mansions suffers any anxiety over gay-ness. \u00a0Over malice, yes, I expect Jesus suffers some distress. \u00a0But, of course, straight people are also guilty of abuse and exploitation, and I expect that hetero-normal church folks, who think their particular sexual appetite\u00a0insulates them against\u00a0god\u2019s wrath over the\u00a0pride and envy they\u00a0manifest by\u00a0working to keep their\u00a0unwanted on the outside,\u00a0are sure to be on the sorry end of \u201cI never knew you\u201d, when the time comes.<\/p>\n
Now, the elevating-the-discussion part.<\/p>\n
The BSA has surely done the Jesus-y thing here. I can\u2019t see any way of reading things differently. Surely the world is happier, kinder, and more loving because the BSA decided to say, to people against whom it has kept its doors closed: you belong. As a Jesus-ite, if not a Christian, I am drawn to the concession in the BSA\u2019s action that folks whom society still tries with ugliness to keep out there, in the leper colony, should be here, at the center.<\/p>\n
Or, rather, I find joy in the unavoidable subtext of the BSA\u2019s action: Jesus is probably out there, with the so-called lepers, and if we who are so zealous to hold the center want to be with him, we\u2019d better move.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My first inclination upon hearing that the LDS church plans to reexamine its relationship with scouting was to reexamine my relationship with the LDS church. But, I climbed down from that peak of indignation. In a sincere effort to avoid the trap of recriminations and to elevate the discussion, I\u2019d like to offer the following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2041,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,4],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-lds-church","tag-scouting"],"yoast_head":"\n
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