The American Family Association recently sent men into women’s restrooms at Target stores.
This is the same organization that did everything it could to prevent same-sex marriage from becoming legal.
According to Sandy Rios, the director of governmental affairs for the evangelical organization, the purpose was to see what happened. I can hardly imagine what they thought would.
At any rate, nothing happened, but apparently that was bad news in their eyes. Rios said they discovered “there are no barriers in the bathroom.”
Imagine that. Target is not promoting discrimination against transgender people.
When I read this story my first thought was, “O God, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.”
Do they not know the deep pain and hurt they are causing, or do they just not care? Either way, this is what “morals regulators,” as scholar John Compton calls them, do. They hurt people.
They hurt people who just want to be left alone to be who they are, people who have done nothing to deserve the names they are called, the adjectives used to describe them, the laws passed to discriminate against them.
My goodness how deluded religious people can be!
Numerous times I listened to the pain and hurt our gay and lesbian church members expressed when they risked sharing their spiritual autobiographies.
It was never easy for them to talk about being rejected by their families and friends, of other kids making fun of them and calling them names when they were growing up, of feeling totally alone in a hostile world, of being afraid someone might physically hurt them.
We all cried every time one of them did. What other response is there when you see pain and hurt people you love have experienced simply because of who they are?
To this day I feel ashamed of the attitudes and actions of churches and Christians toward them.
And I still ask myself how Christians can be so misguided, so blind, so uniformed, so unthinking, so unloving as to think they are justified in causing such pain and suffering to others.
“Hate the sin, love the sinner” has to be at the top of the list of self-righteous statements. I cannot imagine how anyone can say such a thing with a straight face.
I also cannot understand how anyone can believe that putting subjective beliefs above love pleases God, or that what they believe is absolutely right and cannot possibly be wrong, or that what they say the Bible says is without question what the Bible actually says.
It seems to me that evangelicals believe that ends justify means so any personal hurt and pain their words and actions cause serve a greater good.
They are wrong. What they are really doing is leading a modern day moral crusade that is ugly and misguided because all moral crusades are.
Jesus said, treat others the way you want them to treat you.
That is the most basic moral principle there is in the world. Anyone and everyone who tries to live by it is truly one of the beloved of God.
The members of the LGBT community I know do try to live this way. I think it gives them the grace to rise above the hurtful words and actions of people who pay no attention to it.
If evangelicals ever stopped their “morals regulation” crusade long enough to listen to what Jesus did say, I am sure it would help them to actually become the Christians they think they already are.
linnposts.com 
Conservative Catholics are also out in force with their argument of “natural law.” Which is a horrible starting place to argue given the history of that argument and how it has always lost.
Great post, Jan.
Thank you for your comment, Luke, as always.
Thanks, Jan…so true.
What’s even worse is that these “moral crusaders” that you mention, Jan, have been known to go after people who have suffered some affliction purely through accident. I think of the case some 20 years ago of a young man called Ryan White, when he contracted AIDS after a blood transfusion that went wrong. As a result of the ensuing campaign against him, he and his family had to move away from their home in Indiana to another state. I heard that even after his death, his grave was vandalised.
And no doubt, the people who hounded Ryan considered themselves to be followers of Jesus.
I remember this case, Nigel. Just another example of what happens when people engage in “morals regulation” and act as the judge of others as if they are God. Thanks.
Thanks Jan, I appreciate that a tough ex-football player from Lynchburg can evolve as I believe you have done. Inspiring.
Considering the importance of your blog, I hope you don’t mind a note of levity. I recently returned from a flight to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. While strutting through the terminal in my smartly pressed pilot’s uniform and captain’s hat, I calmly walked right into a women’s bathroom. Unfortunately, in this case, there were no women present so I was not aware of my mistake, (although I was a bit confused by the absence of urinals.) Only after I proceeded to a stall, lifted the toilet seat and started to pee did I realize the error of my ways. In my state of panic I dried up very quickly and escaped without ever being noticed. Since then I smile at the potential confusion, or alarm, experienced by the first woman going into that stall and discovering a toilet seat that was up. ( I’m guessing that that is uncommon.)
Could it be that the North Carolina law has nothing to do with safety, privacy, or security but in reality is simply a new battle over the up/down toilet seat, a battle that was lost in penis occupied homes years ago? ( And why do toilet seats in women’s bathrooms have hinges anyway?)
You made me laugh, Wilbur, a good anti-dote to the meanness going around. Thanks.
Jan, I love the phrase, “morals regulators,” so apt. And it comes from that wing that rails against government regulations and other intrusions from govt that they imagine.
I am not enthralled by organized religion, or “church int,” in general, but I have pondered long and hard over the fact that “Christians,” I.e. Those who protest their faith the loudest, seem to ignore what I take to be the core of Christianity, “The Beatitudes,” especially, “These three things abide: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. “.
Cheerz!
Gene
Gene, you are not alone. It’s why the sociological category called “the Dones” is growing.
Jan,
I’m unfamiliar with the Dones. Would you help out here? I’d appreciate it. Cheerz!
The “Dones” are long time church members who are “done” with church and have no plans to go back. They have many reasons, one of which is conservative theology.