IRD Is At It Again!

I don't think I need to explain to anyone reading this blog what the IRD is. Though, if you are interested in a brief refresher course, go here, here, and here.

In the March 28, 2009 (online and copywrited) article, More at Stake: How sexual politics in the Episcopal Church affects churches in Africa (worldmag.com), IRD staffer Faith Mc Donnel, a former Episcopalian (schizmo), makes her case that TEC's road to lgbt equality via baptism (my definition, not hers) is sexual politics. I couldn't disagree more, especially given her apparent equation that "sexual politics" in the U.S. equals:

• somehow compromising the Christian witness abroad as if some of that isn't being done by themselves and furthermore, are you telling us that people without food and water who don't have the Internet are somehow affected by two lesbians in Los Angeles (for instance) getting married and being considered equals in the society's and God's eye?
  

• allegedly exposing other Christians to violence (?) like that isn't already happening by the mere force of inequality here in the US. Hate crimes are up in the U.S:

Although the overall number of reported hate crime incidents remained steady
from 2006 to 2007, of particular note in the 2007 statistics are continued
increases in reported violent attacks against persons of Hispanic origin
and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons.
According to the new FBI report, there were 595 incidents of anti-Hispanic
hate crimes in 2007, an increase of 3.3% from the 576 incidents
reported in 2006. There was also a rise in the number of hate crimes
motivated by sexual orientation bias, with a 5.5% increase in
incidents from 2006 to 2007 (from 1195 to 1265 incidents).
--from Commondreams.org,
Human Rights First Press Release
27 October 2008

In California, 15% of all hate crimes are directed against lgbt folks. Mc Donnell is alleged
to be a human rights advocate. Ms. Mc Donnell, ever heard of young Matthew Sheperd
who was tortured and killed because he was gay?

• helping Islamics apparently world wide (which sounds like the Bush administration pointing to Iraq War demonstrators and calling their first amendment actions treasonous). More uber-right political hogwash.

Now, let me just rant a moment about the term "sexual politics" as used by Mc Donnell with this example from the nutty Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society (read their "purpose" here) as written by Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D.:

Feminism has now positioned itself as the vanguard of the Left, shifting the political discourse from the economic and racial to the social and increasingly the sexual. What was once a socialistic assault on property and enterprise has become a social and sexual attack on the family, marriage, and masculinity. This marks a truly new kind of politics, the most personal and thus potentially the most total politics ever devised: the politics of private life and sexual relations.

Sexual politics is both feminist and homosexual, with no distinct line separating them. Feminism has been the more overtly political doctrine. Until recently, gays asked mostly to be left alone and as such gained widespread sympathy.

If you cannot tell what is wrong with the above statement, you are definitely not a feminist and I would bet that those in agreement aren't gay, either. Equality didn't come from pleasant discussions over lemonade on the veranda for women or for people of color and it won't come this way for the lgbt community, either.

But the worst part of this type of thinking is the branding that somehow women and lgbt folks are not allowed to be who they were born to be, unshackled from the notions of Bibliophiles as it concerns their destiny and wholeness in God's eyes, not the eyes of patriarchal men or those standing in their stead.

If you want to feel bad about your birthright--whatever it may be--you can just google Phyllis Schlafley and that should do it. Not like her? Well, basically, you're screwed, at least by those that really DO play "sexual politics".

*****

I have come to the conclusion, along with many others, that those in the Anglican Communion advocating harm, violence and jailing of lgbt people in Africa through legislation should be tossed from the Communion altogether, and right now. I said this a year ago or more, and I say it again.

Further, the US church, TEC, should just get on with moving forward with same gender marriage vows and blessings (where the state does not recognize same gender marriage). We cannot surrender the rights of Americans to the zealotry of other nations.

Faith Mc Donnell does everyone a disservice in propping up the old notion that two bads make some kind of good. Furthermore, given she is not an Episcopalian, Faith Mc Donnell should keep her nose out of TEC's business and perhaps focus on the ever increasing if ridiculous dogma of the more Calvanist Anglicans that she embraces: Minns, Duncan, Schofield, Orombi, and Akinola for instance.

They like rules. They like lots of rules. They like lots of rules a lot. Mc Donnell should feel right at home. Being anti-American, as she appears, they should love her, too.