The IRS needs to rescind this church’s tax-exempt status immediately:
Now, the couple wants answers, and the church’s pastor is questioning the mindset of some of members of his congregation who caused the problem in the first place.
They had set the date and printed and mailed out all the invitations, but the day before wedding bells were to ring for Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson, they say they got some bad news from the pastor.
“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if he went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” said Charles Wilson.The Wilsons were trying to get married at the predominantly white First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs — a church they attend regularly, but are not members of.
It’s not racist because we have a black president.
(h/t @JoshuaHol)
Ohmmade
My comment is xposted somewhere else.
max
My first though was the same. They should not have tax exempt status to be a hate group. They can discriminate against whoever they want, but not under the guise of being a church.
pastormaker
According to the US Supreme Court’s 1983 ruling, that church has no right to tax exemption.
Apart from that, even if I put on my racist redneck cracker hat for a moment, I don’t understand the congregation’s objection to a same-race opposite-sex marriage. Since when are bigots opposed to African American heterosexuals marrying each other?
MikeJ
Love the hed at the news site. “Black Wedding banned by Baptist church”. A black wedding? Is that like a black mass? No, in fact they don’t like black people.
Should have invited Billy Idol I guess.
rikyrah
and they will swear that they are Christians
edmund dantes
Actually if they are not receiving public funds, I have to say I’m okay with this. It’s the church’s choice to be as bigoted and idiotic as they want to be.
I don’t agree with it. I think it’s abhorrent, but there is nothing that says a religious ceremony has to be performed. They are being stopped from having a religious ceremony (wholely unnecessary for recognition of marriage). They are not stopped from being married.
freelancer (iPhone)
The pastor had no issues marrying the couple, he did it in a different location. It was his congregation that said they wouldn’t allow him to do it there. To which I saw, grow some balls and purge the fucktards from your flock.
Yutsano
@Ohmmade: Clap louder. Your inevitable VICTORY!! is at hand!
Spatula
hmmm…I wonder if at least one of the marrying couple is required to be a member of the church in order for a wedding or funeral or whatever to be performed there. It’s a common requirement.
As per usual, there is likely a LOT more to this story than we’re getting here.
And it may be entirely true that the couple was denied a wedding purely on racist grounds, but one can’t conclude that from this post.
Nevertheless, this thread is an excellent opportunity for BJers to get their RACIST on…
Villago Delenda Est
@edmund dantes:
If they are exempt from property taxes, they are, in effect, receiving public funds for the services that property taxes are used to pay for, such as police and fire protection, street access, the legal system, any public utilities, and so on.
Short Bus Bully
“THIS IS NOT RACIST. THERE IS NO RACISM IN THIS COUNTRY (except Libruls, THEY are the real racists!). NOTHING TO SEE HERE, PLEASE MOVE ALONG.”
/wingnut
geg6
Why do ABL haters insist on posting their stupid comments on her threads? I simply don’t understand how stupid, spiteful and small minded you have to be to do this shit. Much like the bigots at that “church”.
MikeJ
@Spatula:
Doesn’t sound like anybody was complaining about membership. Every bit of information we have about this story says that people complained about black people getting married.
Based on what we know from a Fox affiliate, do think there’s a reason why we shouldn’t conclude that there is some racism involved?
General Stuck
But But But, it’s the white church’s freedom of speech rights. It’s an issue for reasoned debate over when hate is allowed and when it is not. It’s a political position the church has a right to. And liberals must defend this church’s right to religious freedom. Luckily, these black lovers ain’t gay, so they should have a good case in court. right?
Barf on that. Sue the motherfuckers till the cows come home. Then Bury the notion of freedom to hate 50 feet deep – down where it can seem like a good idea.
Randy P
@Spatula: So the pastor is lying about the congregation members who spoke to him? Do you have evidence to back that up?
fraught
We’re going backward, people. I don’t remember incidents like this during the 90’s. It’s that prick Cheney. He gave all the haters encouragement, subtly, with his twisted smirk. W brought along his brain damaged bigotry. Then when O came along it was open season and we are fighting all over again what had been settled issues. This election is more important than 2008.
Emdee
A billboard in Idaho compares Obama to James Holmes. CBS News works very hard to find people supporting this, thereby making it a “legimate ‘people differ’ discussion.”
The criticism of Obama, btw, is that his foreign policy in Afghanistan is killing too many people. I have no idea if it’s about race, because it’s never about race.
General Stuck
@Spatula:
So you are arguing “loophole”. You may have a future in the private equity field, timmeh. BTW, has Lassie come home yet, finally?
edmund dantes
@Villago Delenda Est: If this is the standard we are using, we are going to spend a lot of time stripping and re-applying tax exempt organizations purely based upon what whether we have kept the crazy conservatives away from the levels of power. I have no desire to go down that road.
If you want to argue tax-exempt shouldn’t exist at all for any organization, it’s a different argument, and I am of the mind that tax exempts are rife with abuse.
Death Panel Truck
Some Biblical scholars think Jesus was Ethiopian, and therefore black. These bigots think he looks like the long-haired, bearded white guy whose portrait hangs in every Protestant church basement in America. I think Jesus might have existed as a man, but was certainly not the Son of God.
If that Jesus walked into their church during Sunday services, they wouldn’t recognize him. All they’d have to say to him is “Get a haircut, hippie!”
maya
Jesus is just all white with me,
Jesus is just all white with me,
He was the shiniest dude in Galilee,
You needed shades to see how white was He.
Mnemosyne
I half agree with edmund dantes — I don’t think there’s any kind of legal remedy that can or should be pursued. A church can decide for themselves who can or can’t be married there.
But we sure as hell can publicly shame that congregation for being racist assholes. And, yes, as someone who has had a wedding, it’s particularly assholish for them to make this decision after the invitations have gone out and make the couple scramble to inform all of the guests about the change of venue the day before the wedding.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@geg6:
Because to them, being stupid spiteful and small minded to everyone outside the tribe is a badge of honor.
edmund dantes
@Mnemosyne: Yes. Definitely nothing wrong with shaming and putting this front and center.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, if the couple paid any kind of deposit to hold the venue, that money needs to be refunded to them ASAP. In fact, a refund check should have accompanied the cancellation notification.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Spatula:
Most churches don’t ask that you be a member to have a wedding there. Some will charge something to wed at their church if you don’t belong, but, shit these people, though they weren’t members, did go to church there.
And whilt it might be true what you say, that, “… it may be entirely true that the couple was denied a wedding purely on racist grounds, but one can’t conclude that from this post,” by now, I’m through giving assholes the benefit of the doubt. By now, my feeling is, “If it looks racist, and smells racist, then it is racist.” Too many people like you are willing to look for reasons to wxcuse this kind of shit. I think it’s time that we as a society begin calling this shit out for what it is more widely.
Every time something like this happens, too amny people are willing to look for excuses for the assholes who do this. Some yahoo congressman calls the president “uooity” and people buy his lame-ass whining that he didn’t know what it meant. Fuck that. If people want to be racist assholes, then that is their right. But the rest of us have a duty to this country to shun them for it. All decent people in the U.S. need to shun this church.
Calouste
@Spatula:
Look shitface, if you are planning to have a wedding (no, your blow-up doll doesn’t count) in a church, you just don’t walk in and get hitched. There is some planning involved, and during that planning you meet with whoever runs that specific church franchise, and they check if you are a member or if you need to be a member. That doesn’t happen the day before.
Don’t you have some crosses to burn?
Shawn in ShowMe
@Spatula:
I know Mississipi is not exactly a hotbed of intellectualism but I’m going to give their local media the benefit of the doubt here. Every major media outlet in Mississippi is reported this ban as race-driven. Hell, the mayor of the town is issuing public apologies in hopes that the nation doesn’t view this incident as representative of current racial attitudes.
scav
@edmund dantes: Come to that, shouldn’t they be proud of their actions and clamoring to Bear Witness of their Steadfast Messaging of Christ’s Holy Teachings on da TV?
Mnemosyne
@edmund dantes:
And this is the kind of assholish behavior that anyone who’s even had a wedding would wince at. You pull the venue the day before? Even a KKK member would think that’s a pretty fucked-up thing to do.
General Stuck
If you want to move the Overton Window, you are going to have to jump a few sharks. Don’t break the law, just shape it into a blunt instrument with a long view of history and the forces of change. It is the fastest way to get the justice you want, and deserve. But there can be no crying in lawfare. And no purity. What. So. Ever.
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
This. If there was a problem with them not being members, it would have come up long before they signed the contract to reserve their date at the church. Churches will tell you right up front if you have to be a member in order to get married there so neither party ends up wasting their time.
We got married at a lovely Unitarian church and we were told was that the pastor of the church could not do the wedding since we were not church members, so one of the the junior ministers did it, which was perfectly fine.
Villago Delenda Est
@Emdee:
Did those responsible for the billboard ALSO criticize the deserting coward for starting that war, and the war in Iraq?
If not, then we know what the true motivation is. As we do with the teatards who suddenly developed an aversion to massive deficit spending right around 8PM PST on 4 November 2008.
ABL
“The IRS needs to rescind this church’s tax-exempt status immediately:” & “It’s not racist because we have a black president” is all it takes.
20 words.
I’m good.
valdemar
As a Brit I concede we’ve got racism by the bucketful, just so you know and don’t have to do any ANGRY TYPING!!!
But… if this happened in the UK the church would be under siege by people exercising their democratic right to protest at other people’s vile wankery. Why doesn’t that happen in Mississippi?
ABL
In a couple months, Imma just post the word “black” and see what happens.
cmorenc
@edmund dantes:
If so, why hadn’t the members objected to the couple’s previous attendance of services at the church, even though they had not attempted yet to become members of that church?
This is an act the members of the church who objected will definitely have to answer before Jesus on the day of judgment, according to their own Christian theology. This is probably one of those churches that has Bibles with pictures of Jesus-as-Aryan-Hippie in them (because of the long hair), thus rendering them willfully ignorant of the fact that Jesus was almost certainly swarthy-skinned, non-Aryan Jesus whose non-white appearance would likely have caused them to deny him membership in their church. The ironies here would be delicious, if they weren’t so bigoted and mean-spirited.
Spatula
@MikeJ:
Part of my point is that there is no way for one to make reach a conclusion from what she has posted here, at BJ, the blog I’m reading.
scav
@ABL: Type a single period in say, about fontsize 300, and watch the same fuss unfold.
Spatula
@Randy P:
Of course not, which is why I didn’t say that I did.
But there is no way to know from this trolling for page hits post on BJ, the blog I am reading, because ABL doesn’t provide any evidence.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spatula:
Actually, if you bother to read the blockquoted portion, it’s remarkably easy and logical to draw that conclusion.
That is, if you have a modest amount of intelligence.
There’s your trapdoor.
gwangung
@Spatula: Then you’re not very bright and not good at reading comprehension.
Spatula
@General Stuck:
Hey, Schmuck, you need to use my BJ nym, and only my BJ nym, to address me or you will be threatened with banning directly by Cole just as one other of your posse was a couple of days ago.
Kapisch?
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Spatula:
Yeah, but see, after we’ve watched the last three years, there is a way to reach a conclusion. Try reading this part: “‘The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if he [the pastor] went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,’ said Charles Wilson.” That’s kind of easy to understand. Now, you might not believe Mr. Wilson. You believe what he says but not believe what the pastor told him. But you can’t say there’s “no way for one to make reach a conclusion” about whether this is racism or not.
Shawn in ShowMe
@valdemar:
Because the UK is to Mississippi what Metropolis is to Bizarro World.
scav
@Spatula: The sheer depth and breadth of your intellect is thusly made manifest. An amnesiac with no ability to click-though., insisting that all information be present in a single place. OK, let’s see. Let’s start here.
A is for Apple. a is for apple too, even though it looks different! It’t the SAME LETTER! Isn’t that Amazing? ! A is in amazing too!
B is for …..
Spatula
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Coming from one of the most tribal commenters on this blog, that’s pretty funny.
Villago Delenda Est
@Spatula:
My, aren’t we sensitive. And bitchy.
Shawn in ShowMe
@ABL:
Too many letters. Try blah.
General Stuck
@valdemar:
There is no way to explain that to a foreign person, to where it makes any sense. And that is at least half true for Americans that haven’t spent much time there. There has been great progress at least in the public behavior of native white supremacists, but the seeds of resentment and entitlement live on in the soil itself. Waiting to sprout little weeds of hate when you look away for a second or two.
Lemme put it to you this way. The white old south was willing to sacrifice about every ounce of their blood and treasure to keep the practice of owning humans as nothing more than farm implements. You can’t hardly kill that kind of evil, but sometimes can keep in a box for awhile. But the rush of being at the top of the human totem pole with the power of life and death over other souls that are different, always keeps its allure. It is an opiate that lingers through the spans of history as the memory of forefathers imprinted on the youth of one generation to the next. When it was there to begin with.
Randy P
@Spatula: The post provided a linky. I clicked on the linky. You apparently did not. The way the internet thing works is, when somebody provides a hyperlink to another article and you want to see what it says instead of sounding off about what you think it might say, then you clock on the linky. And then you read. And then you comment on what it actually says.
You’re saying there was no evidence for the conclusion stated in the quoted article. To actually see whether that’s true, you should read the article where the conclusion is drawn.
Spatula
@Calouste:
It would be nice if ABL provided some evidence of that here on BJ, wouldn’t it?
Shitface? How uncivil.
scav
@Spatula: Ah, the sheer bravery of you being willing to stand up for your convictions under your real name is also gold-medal worthy.
ABL
@scav: Heh.
Spatula
@ABL:
Isn’t that pretty much what you do now?
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Now, now, I’m sure the real reason the church canceled the wedding the day before is because they lost electricity to the building.
I mean, sure, there’s no evidence that that happened, but lack of evidence proves that it must have happened that way, so clearly there was no racism involved.
In Timmeh-logic, anyway.
(That’s right, Timmeh — I used your old nym. Make sure to e-mail Cole and tell him to ban me right away.)
quannlace
Well, for Heaven’s sakes. They just wanted to be married there. It isn’t as if they wanted to use the restrooms or drink out of the same water fountain.
General Stuck
@Spatula:
LOL, touchy troll today, eh? timmeh.
Spatula
@scav:
Actually, I just prefer front pagers present their post with links to supporting evidence, not just links to their own little blog.
Calouste
@Spatula:
Evidence of what, shitface?
Mnemosyne
@Spatula:
ABL owns WBRC Channel 6 in Alabama? Who knew?
Spatula
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Wouldn’t you want to hear from at least a few other people involved with this incident before reaching a conclusion? Do you always accept the word of one party?
I was raised VERY Lutheran, I had five uncles/grandfather who were ministers; church politics are a NIGHTMARE of drama and intrigue and you definitely can’t just take a pastor’s word for it.
Spatula
@Villago Delenda Est:
I follow Cole’s banning policy, which is posted around here somewhere. It’s quite detailed. You should read it.
Your use of the word “bitchy” seems both mysoginistic and hompophobic. Telling.
scav
@Spatula: sweetheart, you’re the one with amnesia, I can remember the past. By the way, quick tip, @Calouste: is right about your facial adornment. I think you confused your current nym for a lolleypop after using it for a more intimate cleansing tool.
birthmarker
Just for those who don’t know, Baptist congregations hire and fire their ministers. Most denominations have a district organization that makes job assignments.
Thus the minister’s fear of removal.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Nah, it’s Timmy, aka Tim, Interrupted, aka Kola Noscopy. WP actually took the hint when he was banned, or at least managed to conceal his return under a new nym a little better.
Though apparently he’s going to run off to Cole and narc on me for daring to reveal his previous nyms, which apparently is a bannable offense, so this may be the last message you will ever see from me.
gelfling545
@freelancer (iPhone): Or leave & look for a different church to lead – although he obviously doesn’t lead this congregation.
Spatula
@Mnemosyne:
And yes, I’ll be letting Cole know. He doesn’t care for that.
Shawn in ShowMe
Everybody’s picking on Timmeh, I mean Spatula. It’s just plain mean-spirited to single out such a fair-minded fellow. We’re the real racists not Timmeh .. er Spatula. Darn it!
It’s ABL using her black mod powers to edit my posts. I swear to FSM, Cole! Don’t ban me, don’t no .. AAAAARGHHH!!!
What, I’m still here? Thank you Jeebus.
Matthew Reid Krell
@valdemar: Speaking as a Mississippian who has argued before the judge in this town, I can answer your question: because it’s Mississippi.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@
SpatulaSpecial Timmeh:Have you started your Free Sandusky! web site yet?
Mnemosyne
@Spatula:
Please do. In fact, make sure that you have him post publicly on here that I was banned for referring to you by your previous nyms.
We’ll wait here while you go do that.
gelfling545
@cmorenc: These are probably also the people who will be surprised to hear that Jesus was Jewish and didn’t speak English.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Yup, FAUX, NBC, CBS, ABC & ABL.
Spatula
@efgoldman:
My lord, you’re a stupid person. That wasn’t me.
scav
@valdemar: Did a quick check, for me to go there to protest in Jackson would be along the lines of a Londoner protesting in Prague and I think the gap measured in culture, well, tough call that.
Left Coast Tom
As I understood it, wanting to change the law to pull 501( c )(3) based on racism was one of the factors in the “Religious” Right lining up against President Carter.
That “church” has a webpage which points to a Facebook page which, apparently, no longer exists. Interesting how “social media” sites don’t long survive people being unsociable.
ItAintEazy
@birthmarker:
Yeah, I could understand why he doesn’t just say “fuck you” to a bunch of racist neanderthals, because he knows that deep down inside, those neanderthals are actually good people.
The crazy in this country has gotten this bad because we keep enabling these fuckers because they’re family, friends, whatever.
Ohmmade
@Ohmmade: No really. It is. And it’s great. Everyone should come to BJ so they can follow a link to another page where my entire comment exists. I promise it’s really great.
Spatula
Read it and weep, haters.
https://balloon-juice.com/2012/07/15/moral-compasses-can-i-haz-pleeze-paternopsu-edition/#comment-3450437
ABL
@Mnemosyne: The jig is up.
geg6
@ABL:
Heh. That would make my day. Even better, just type “black” with a link back to your blog where the whole post is just “black”.
TimmehSpatula will probably have a stroke. Which will mean you’ve truly done a service to the world.Mnemosyne
@Spatula:
Your real name is Kola Noscopy?
Dude, that must really suck for you.
ABL
@geg6: I laughed OL.
Left Coast Tom
@efgoldman: I’m thinking they had to take it down not because they were required to do so, but because they couldn’t keep up with the task of scrubbing public opinion of their…special qualities from their page.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: It’s like his uber special sekrit power! He just e-mails JC and bitches and POOF! his opposition is silenced! Special Timmeh is indeed special. But you know he has thoughtful rational long discussions with JC amirite?
Southern Beale
Not the first time something like this has happened. A Kentucky church banned an interracial couple from marrying back in November.
geg6
@Yutsano:
Yeah, sure. I saw him say that. I think he mistakes that voice in his head for John Cole.
Shawn in ShowMe
@ItAintEazy:
It also didn’t help that radical black element that put the fear of God into bigots were assassinated/jailed/driven from the country in the 1960s and 1970s. If SNCC and the Panthers had survived that era, we wouldn’t be having this thread.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
I don’t actually disagree with Cole that posting someone’s real name is crossing a line — we can make plenty of fun of Kola/Spatula/Timmeh without knowing (or, frankly, caring) who he is IRL.
I just feel sorry for any poor bastard whose parents named him Kola Noscopy. I mean, I know people give their children some weird names, but that’s really over the line.
scav
If I remember correctly because GSD, I can’t be expected to click though a comment and Spatua-Lollypop I’m-calling-Dad-on-you didn’t provide enough context, oh what a funny-funny, I think somebody got a warning about revealing a RL identity, not past nyms.
BillinGlendaleCA
I looked at “Spatula’s” link and now I’m very confussed. So if I refer to someone via a previously used nym, that is a banable offense, or is it only if i refer to a user by using their “real name”. How am I supposed to know what their real name is? If they use their real name as a nym? If they change it from their real name to something else. I’m very confussed.
RedKitten
Dude, it’s a blog. It’s not 3000-word investigative journalism. Only you are being dickish enough to demand that ABL put on her Sherlock Holmes hat and investigate every possible angle to this story, including phoning the church and asking them what their wedding policies are for non-members.
Srsly, dude. It’s common sense. If them not being members was the issue, it would have ABSOLUTELY come up long before the wedding. That’s not rocket science. Anybody who has been married in a church, or known someone married in a church, is well aware of this.
So if you want to criticize for a good reason, fine. But right now you’re just being an unreasonable douche.
Valdivia
@Mnemosyne:
wait that wasn’t a nym? how can that be a real name?
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m pretty sure the problem was that Amir found out what Spatula’s name is IRL and was posting that information, for which he was rightly scolded by Cole.
But it looks like, given Spatula’s well-established reading comprehension problems, he thought the problem was that Amir had posted his previous nym(s). So I would go by what Cole’s clear dictum was (don’t post the real name of commenters who use a nym) and not by Spatula’s interpretation.
Yutsano
@efgoldman: Fetching, even.
@Mnemosyne: Well Special Timmeh is rather famous for dishing out but not taking. And his supposed “special relationship” with JC doesn’t pass any smell test. AFAIK Cole thinks we’re all pretty much assholes, rather equally.
Left Coast Tom
@Mnemosyne: Almost as bad as the idea that there’s a person named “Santorum.”
I’m pretty sure that if Timmeh/Kola-Nosopy/Spatula/Whomever actually cared about whether this insanity came up the day before a long-planned wedding, then instead of bashing ABL’s terrible failure to post the bloody obvious, he could have spent five seconds with The Googles and figured it out.
Obviously he/she/it didn’t really care about that “point.”
scav
@Yutsano: Wasn’t there a time when getting chewed out personally by him by name was actually even thought a distinct honor?
General Stuck
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I agree. This person used that name for years when stopping by here to troll, and therefore how are we to know if it was real or a nym? Or therefore, now off limits if it was his real name, then changed it to a fake one.
On this very thread, timmeh called me “schmuck”, so I demand to not be called that, cause it was what my momma named me, before I changed it to General Stuck.
Mr Stagger Lee
@ItAintEazy: And I bet the pay there is nice,the church is probably a big one in the nicest areas of Jackson, after all the pastor could leave but then he ends up at the First Baptist Church in KlanSwamp Bottom MS, some small shack with dilapidated panels.
Mnemosyne
@Valdivia:
I think my joke may have been mistooken. Timmeh is trying to claim that Cole threatened to ban Amir for posting one of Timmeh’s previous nyms, but it’s pretty clear from the link that what happened is that Amir posted Timmeh’s real name and those comments were deleted.
Which is why I mocked Timmeh by asking him why his parents named him Kola Noscopy.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@efgoldman:
If John bans me for pointing out Timmeh then I guess Timmeh posting here means more to him than sane people. If that happens then seven plus years (and several donations) are out the window for me and I’ll just leave.
Homey don’t play that game.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
Well, it is hard to know what happened with Khalid’s comments deleted. But if he used the first and last name that was real, and neither had been used by spatula before, then that is understandable to get called on.
But shithead did use a three letter first name for years, so if was that use, then I don’t get the seriousness of the problem.
General Stuck
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I would be delighted to get banned. I don’t think anyone that comments here on a regular basis is fully sane. Least of all, moi’.
Yutsano
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Wait wait whoa whoa back up there cowboy.
You’re sane?
:)
Mike G
@gelfling545:
And he wasn’t American, despite what you hear on the radio.
Amir Khalid
@General Stuck:
Out kitchen-tool friend occasionally links to his own website, where he uses his real name. I made the mistake of assuming from this that he made no secret of it, so I mentioned his actual surname in a few comments. John Cole said that was why he deleted my comments, and threatened to ban me.
scav
This site’s all about the banning. That and politeness, sanity, decorum and lace doilies under the Spode china. Always has been.
wrb
@pastormaker:
It’s not the marryin’, it’s the toilet seats.
General Stuck
@Amir Khalid:
Well, I gotta go with Cole then, if it was a surname you brought here, even if from a tim link of his website.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@General Stuck:
@Yutsano:
Mea culpa, somewhat sane. :D
Donut
I agree with comments made upthread that the fuckers in the congregation who caused the problem should be shamed loudly and longly.
Which is really what is going on with chick fil a, too. I don’t really want to see their CEO’s speech stifled, nor should the company actually lose out on a permit or zoning request because e guy is a tool, and a homophobe bigot tool, at that.
I suspect, in the end, that none of politicians standing in their way really want to hold their permits permanently. But the threat of it sure as fuck is effective, so I like what they are doing because it gets the media involved and the finger of shame pointed squarely at the company and the CEO. And that is pretty damn valuable, and moral indignation alone is not enough anymore to cause a stink, someone has to actually make it a play-for-keeps situation.. Ultimately Dan Cathy is now more likely to decide that the downside to showing his bigotry too plainly isn’t worth it. The last thing a franchisor needs is bad publicity, as expansion is the name of the game for them, and bad PR makes thst harder for them everywhere, going forward.
He can just go back to keeping his bigotry private and donating to American Crossroads, like a good white male Murkin CEO should.
So it should be with racists Ike in this congregation. I think that’s all anyone is saying, in the end. Shame them all. Boycotts and petitions have their place, but they just don’t get the job done. We have to fucking throw some goddamn hissy fits about racism, LGBTQ-phobia, and all kinds of bigotry.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Amir Khalid:
Ahhh, so Timmeh is misrepresenting what Cole said/did.
No surprise there.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: I used to have a website where I used my real name, then again, it wouldn’t have provided much more information about me than my current nym here.
Amir Khalid
@General Stuck:
It was my own fault so I’m not complaining about it. Let Spatulaa gloat. He gets little enough praise here for his wonderfulness as it is.
Spatula
:D
I am really welling up right now…pardon me while I fetch a tisssssue.
It touches me deeply to have brought you all so much closer together in your unified loathing of me.
My work is done.
General Stuck
@Amir Khalid:
LOL, you make a salient point.
General Stuck
@Spatula:
Reap/Sow, grasshopper.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: I guess the kitchen tool is a “uniter not a divider”. I’ve heard that somewhere before. I can’t decide where though.
Spatula
@General Stuck:
Suck/Swallow, banana slug.
General Stuck
@Spatula:
That’s our timmeh.
JPL
Local Atlanta news just covered this story.
Spatula
I do think you folks spend waaaaaaaay too much time watching the horrendous news channels available domestically. Christ, it’s 95% poorly reported bullshit presented by self absorbed douchebags.
What is the point?
Villago Delenda Est
@Spatula:
Yeah, pretty much in the same way Elton John used it.
Try again, maggot.
Amir Khalid
@Spatula:
As opposed to you, who spend waaaaaaaay too much time observing and mocking other commenters. 95% of us are self absorbed douchebags who don’t do anything but mock you right back.
What is the point?
JPL
@Spatula: I live deep in repub country and they thought it was news because it is 2012 not 1912.
Steve
Refusing to marry a black people is disgusting, but I just want to point out that taking away a church’s tax-exempt status because they refuse to marry a black couple, an interracial couple, or whatever, is only a step or two removed from forcing churches to perform same-sex weddings, that thing we liberals keep promising we will never, ever do.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@efgoldman:
Wasn’t even necessary… your snark brought out my serious. :)
See, it is all your fault! ;p
scav
@Steve: Well then, how about some sort of in-depth and extensive legal investigation into the sanctity of the holy contract then? Because I would assume some sort of signed papers were involved. I’m not personally hung on which exact consequence slapped on these stellar examples of neighbors, but something is called for.
The simple fact that shouting “Holy! Holy! Religous Freeeeeeeeedom!” is becoming the gold standard (the Stand-Your-Ground standard) for justifying any behavior so long as one clings to the rood is a bit of a problem. Then again, I guess, if thems going to be the rules, then I say we can come up with imaginatively shaped rude roods to cling to and polish up the halos on all sorts of sacred behaviors.
Odie Hugh Manatee
As long as the blahs stayed in the pews and acted the part of proper window dressing so the church looked tolerant, that was fine with the congregation. Once they wanted something more than that, while the pastor was more than happy to accommodate their request, the congregation revolted and showed how truly revolting they are. The pastor doesn’t manage his flock, they manage the pastor. If he was any kind of man of God he would walk away from that bunch of intolerant racists.
That he preferred to give in and keep his job tells anyone all they need to know about him.
Mnemosyne
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I dunno — he did still perform the wedding himself (though at a different location) and this all seems to have happened within a matter of days, so I’m willing to give the pastor another week or two to figure out what he wants to do.
I’m hoping what he wants to do is give a fiery speech from the pulpit and dramatically quit at the end of it, but that’s just me.
Steve
@scav: If a church doesn’t want black members at all, doesn’t allow women to be priests, doesn’t perform same-sex marriages, etc., I disapprove of that, but there is no law against it, nor is it a basis to yank their tax exemption.
Like you, I’m tired of freedom of religion being used as an excuse to deny people health insurance and crap like that, but telling a church who they have to marry is pretty obviously interference with freedom of religion. You can’t force churches to integrate as if they were workplaces or schools. Just leave these people to their bigotry.
burnspbesq
@pastormaker:
Cite?
burnspbesq
@ABL:
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, woman, have you forgotten everything you learned in Con Law, Ad Law, and Tax? Or do people you don’t approve of not have any due process rights because you say so?
Bruce S
This is the living, lingering racist legacy of the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination which was – literally – born in the sin of slavery and thrived for a hundred and fifty years as a defender of segregation. The irony is that – in a PR operation IMHO – they recently elected their own “black president.” But this outfit, which took decades after the civil rights movement to go on record in pro forma turnabout from this central fact to their very existence, is still the same old same old. While the racism lingers at the base, the official controlling bureaucracy still actively and without any shame promotes overt bigotry against gays, women and…liberals (driving any blossoming of “modernist” theology or social thought from their seminaries in recent years.)
If you want to put a face on their bullshit at the top, check out “Rev. Dr.” Richard Land, their “ethicist”, who is a mouthpiece for the worst turns of the GOP, nothing more and nothing less.
Not to put too fine a point on it, this has always – from their Day One – been a heretical organization, steeped in sin from the vantage point of the Christianity I read in, as example, the Book of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount and Christ’s invocation of “love thy neighbor” as the only “Commandment” that is ultimately meaningful.
This isn’t surprising in the least, and the rot isn’t just in some little congregation of yahoos located in Mississippi, but in the very essence of this organization that covers it’s bigotry with Plastic Jesus theology. Jimmy Carter was raised in this church, but left it when it’s insistence on reactionary dogmas became untenable for him. Same with Bill Moyers and Bill Clinton. They should dissolve themselves and, if they want to continue as practicing Christians in the Baptist tradition, rejoin the American Baptists they split from back when their primary concern was using scripture to defend human slavery. As a Christian, I find this front group for the worst, most mean-spirited political currents in our nation’s history – to this very day – repugnant.
cdmarine
Jeebus, I hope this impulse to request government intervention when churches get their bigot on doesn’t catch on elsewhere in the leftosphere! Do you have any idea how much time the gay folks in your midst have spent pointing out the stupidity of people who are ascairt that the gobment’s going to come force their pastor to marry the local sodomites? Come on, now! What’s next, forcing the Catholic church into the 18th Century by making them marry divorced people?
Seriously. Just let them be the bigotted assholes they are. They don’t have to marry anyone they don’t want to marry. And they don’t have to be treated with a lick of respect by the rest of their community, either.
They damn well do have to return any sort of deposit that couple paid, though. And I trust that saner, better individuals in that community will show that couple some love.
fraught
Don’t spend much time here so I’m confused about why everyone allows spatula or tim,interrupted or whoever he is to takeover this entire comment thread. Is he worth it in some way that is not obvious in his comments? Is he smart in some way that I’m not seeing. Why are you all so eager to cast your pearls before swine? What’s the backstory here?
Bruce S
@Mnemosyne:
Every minister I’ve known – and my father and two uncles were ministers and I’m currently a member of a church with two pastors – will perform weddings for folks who aren’t members. The pastor of this church agreed to perform the wedding. The minister here appears not to have been the problem – it was the retrograde members who hijacked an event that should have been joyous for this couple, but which some ugly types decided to turn sour.
General Stuck
@cdmarine:
The only thing that was suggested as far as the government intervening, concerned taking away their tax exempt status. While I doubt current federal laws would allow for bigotry to be grounds for that, I also don’t think the constitution mandates that tax exempt status, that was set by congress and can be adjusted to require such churches to not violate other fundamental constitutional principles as a requirement for maintaining such an exempt tax status.
Government requires similar standards for about every thing to do with any kind of manner that they are connected to, via taxes collected and spent. Where private entities on the receiving end cannot discriminate and continue to receive those federal tax dollars. And I see no reason tax exemption for churches should not have similar strings attached.
Though the law would have to be changed, but just letting the bigots be bigots isn’t really how social change occurs. And imo, should not be surrendered out of hand, under the banner of freedom of religion. And blithe acceptance of that status quo. Liberals used to understand this concept and won many victories testing the limits of accepted notions of ‘the way things are and always have been’, and bent the legal and social norms of the day to the breaking point. Maybe it’s time to pick up that uncompromising litigious sword again. The wingnuts sure have learned to do this, as they chisel away at their losses to progress, through relentless and legal means of repetitious relentless agitation using the system to push the envelope. And when they lose, they just go back to the well over and over and over. To the point that in many red states, something like abortion rights are but an empty legal promise to women in those states.
delphi_ote
@freelancer (iPhone): Came here to say the exact same thing. What a coward.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Mnemosyne: “I’m hoping what he wants to do is give a fiery speech from the pulpit and dramatically quit at the end of it, but that’s just me.”
Amen.
Yeah, I went there. ;p
Odie Hugh Manatee
@fraught:
Spatula/Timmeh/Kola Noscopy or whatever they are going by at the moment, has a storied history here. It’s a disgusting combination of racism, intolerance, support/practice of pedophilia and being a Sandusky apologist. I’m leaving out a lot more but suffice it to say that they are one disgusting piece of shit who tries to sucker innocents into conversation.
We deride so you can decide (to engage or disengage with the creep).
You’re welcome. :D
Stillwater
@ABL: “The IRS needs to rescind this church’s tax-exempt status immediately:” & “It’s not racist because we have a black president” is all it takes.
20 words.
I’m good.
Chumming. Sometimes the truth is all the bait you need.
Jebediah
@Spatula:
I submit that you do not exist.
fraught
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Oh! As a victim of child sexual abuse I’d want to tear his lower front off and dowse him with vinegar for defending Sandusky. Victim #2 just came forward, lawyered up and ready to maul Penn state. We have deep resourses of anger, we who have been tampered with by those who would put their hands on us. I am forewarned. Thanks.
Spatula
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I’m curious: How is it that you KNOW of this practice of mine?
lol, what a pompous little weirdo you are, all big and buff on the intertubes, all policin’ the other commenters and what not…
Spatula
@Jebediah:
Pie me. Please, I’m begging you. But you won’t.
Spatula
@fraught:
Pretty arrogant there, aren’t ya?
As I’ve stated numerous times here, I was molested by a doctor during my sports physical when I was 12 years old. Are we even now?
But for some reason, that fact doesn’t garner me any empathy here because I don’t spout the approved line that my life was necessarily destroyed by it.
So, uh, fuck you.
You’re welcome.
Bruce S
IRS Code – “To qualify for tax-exempt status, such an
organization (churches) must meet the following requirements…
■ the organization’s purposes and activities may not
be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.”
Not a lawyer, etc., but…seems like violation of fundamental public policy, if not the law. Folks may not want to go there, however, because if enforced it would be trumpeted as precedent to gin up opposition to legalizing LGBT marriage.
ABL
@burnspbesq: The IRS should deem the church’s discriminatory practices a violation of public policy (as Bruce points out) and thenrevoke the church’s tax exempt status.
The church has no absolute right to tax exempt status, and if it does, surely you can provide some case or statutory law stating such.
mclaren
Un. Fucking. Believeable.
What the hell? We stepped into a time machine and it’s goddamn 1955 now?
dopey-o
@efgoldman: also, you must return the Seekrit D-Coder Ringz too. also.
General Stuck
Maybe the law doesn’t have to be changed then. Just enforced.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@
SpatulaNAMBLA Lobbyist:Boy do you leave out a lot of detail when you revise… I mean, tell someone what a freak… I mean, about the unwarranted suffering you voluntarily endure here. Reading between the lines, you can see that you projected your alleged abuse onto the victims of Sandusky in an attempt to minimize their suffering and excuse his actions.
And that’s only scratching the surface of the scab that you are,
TimmehNAMBLA Lobbyist.Spatula
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
lol
dumbass
scav
@Steve: I think my preferred solution is to have only marriages performed by the state be recognized by the state. No ceremonies performed by churches (mosques, temples, shamen, jedi masters, et al) get recognized as valid in the eyes of the state. Have to stand in line at the Dept of Marriage Recognition and sign the forms on the dotted lines after the traditional waiting in line. 20 years on, everyone will get weepy and nostalgic about the terrible plastic chairs they had to sit on while holding hands. Whomsoever wanted to make their legitimate in the eyes of their jealous Diety and Exclusive Coffee Klatch could do so to their hearts content and if they don’t wish to bow to govt control and get it recognized by the state, they can pay single taxes. Once they lose their grip on enforcing their prejudices as to recognized and valid relationships on everyone, even those not opting into their little exclusive cults, then I’m more than happy to let them be exclusive and discriminatory all they want, privately and don’t frighten the horses. While we’re at it, might as well make abundantly clear and spell out their specific obligations / exemptions to obey the laws of the land in other fuzzy areas such as hiring, reporting abuse, business ownership, etc. The line between corporations and religious organizations is getting as dangerously fuzzy as is the line between meat-based personhood and corporate personhood and it’s damn funny how its always the meatspace that comes out on the short side.
mapaghimagsik
I think churches can marry or not marry who they want. But, I think they should pay taxes just like any other bigoted organization.
Though I wouldn’t cry if all churches lost their tax exempt status.
TooManyJens
@Spatula:
What happens on your computer when you click on the sentence that begins, “It was to be their big day”?
Oh, you didn’t? Mmm.
Spatula
@TooManyJens:
Oh you got me, Jens.
You’re the bomb.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
And this is different from the system we have now … how, again? I distinctly remember waiting in line for 30 minutes to get our marriage license issued — something that could only be done in-person — because the couple ahead of us had some complicated divorce paperwork they had to have verified before their license could be issued.
ALL marriages are currently licensed and approved by the state. The only difference I can see you proposing is that you want to remove religious personnel from the state’s list of approved signers of the marriage certificate and only allow county clerks, judges, etc. to sign them.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Exactly. I want a clear bright line between the marriages recognized by the state and those recognized by religions. Because they’re exploiting the overlap by imposing their “spiritual” criteria and imposing them on everyone else, believer or not. Just as I wanted some clear lines drawn delineating the contexts where their religious tenets on say hiring qualifications (say, no females allowed as priests) trump those of civil society and those contexts where it doesn’t work (they can’t refuse to hire woman doctors in clinics because women must submit to the commandments of men and not the other way around). The policies of PR-protection imposed by Bishops should be no less legally accountable than those imposed by Suits. I’m sure the secrecy of the confessional could be handled by privacy rules similar to those followed by MDs.
fraught
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Yeah, I see how he does that. I’m wondering why he’s expecting sympathy (um, empathy) here where he is the hated outsider. Seems he would go somewhere else where it would be explained to him that this syndrome is typical of the responses to child abuse. Perhaps the doctor was black? It’s kind of important to know whether he was gay before the abuse or if he attributes his orientation to the abuse. Gay boys and straight boys have different guilt reactions. My guess is that he was gay at the time of the abuse. He does rather seem to enjoy the abuse he gets here. It somehow empowers him. Another paradoxical response to early trauma.
Quaker in a Basement
ABL, if you want to start something with just one word, don’t post the word “black.” Post the word “white.”
Rednecks can’t stand it when they think black folks are talking about ’em.
Yutsano
@Quaker in a Basement: Okay I LOLed. Cause it’s so true!
Spatula
@fraught:
or…you and your BJ peeps could stop hurling abuse.
Just a thought.
A Humble Lurker
@Spatula:
Where did you say that? I would honestly like a link.
And even if it is true, (both that you said it and what you said) it doesn’t make your views on child molestation any less disgusting.
El Cid
@A Humble Lurker: Hey, lots of 10 to 12 year olds dress really sexy in the locker room, and what middle-aged coach can truly be sure that they mean ‘no’ if they don’t say ‘yes‘.
Better to assume that sex between middle schoolers and middle-agers is okay than to hurl around accusations of racism just because some church don’t want a couple of n****** to get married there.
Priorities, people.
Spatula
@A Humble Lurker:
You don’t know my views on child molestation because your reading comprehension is severely clouded by your preconceptions and glorious sense of self righteousness.
I shared my past childhood experience with the jackals during a couple of the Sandusky threads. Look it up yourself.
Spatula
@El Cid:
I think you’re probably already fully aware that you are a pig.
Jebediah
@El Cid:
Absolutely. If we aren’t careful, feelings could get hurt.
La Gata Gris
@Spatula: Spatula, I made the mistake of reading that comment A Humble Lurker linked too. *Shudder* Look, if you can’t understand that 10 -12 year olds are legally and morally incapable giving consent to sex with adults, you are seriously messed up in the head.
Probably TMI but – you know kids to explore between themselves. I am a woman and remember a few childhood episodes of sexual explorations with other girls my age, no big deal – because there isn’t the creepy power exploitations adult abusers perpetrate. Most sane people understand this. Why don’t you?
Amir Khalid
@La Gata Gris:
Spatula does love to stir up an argument, even if he has to invent, out of nothing, a case for a specious position contrary to that taken by the Balloon Juice hive-mind. You’ve already noted his position on adults raping children (maybe the kid was enjoying it, which of course is neither here nor there), and on members of a white congregation refusing to let a black couple get married in their church (maybe church rules say the pastor can’t marry non-members, which of course is nonsense).
Spatula
@La Gata Gris:
Dunce. Learn to read with discernment.
I am not re-arguing this topic. I stand by everything I wrote there and elsewhere on the topic.
Sandusky was convicted in a court of law, and that is perfectly fine with me. Never said otherwise. As I said and may say again LEARN TO READ FOR MEANING.
Now…piss off.
Spatula
@Amir Khalid:
As stated above, piss off, double dunce.
You can’t read either, but given the rote nature of most of your comments, that is not surprising.
ETA: “the BJ hive mind”…lol As if such a thing exists. Cole barely knows what he thinks on a given topic from one day to the next. hahahaha
La Gata Gris
@Spatula: I am quite capable of reading, dear. Not only did I survive elementary school, I survived high school and got all edjummacated ‘n stuff in linguistics in college. And I gotta say your comment from November is twisted as hell. You don’t seem to comprehend the basics of sexual assault. And you seem quite dismissive of racism too.
I don’t know if you just like being a contrarian for the sake of being one, or if you are a completely clueless malatkwii, or both. None of this speaks well of you.
Spatula
@La Gata Gris:
Nevertheless, my past state of completely and totally not giving a flying shit-fuck what you think of me continues unabated, my dearest twit.
La Gata Gris
@Spatula: It is hardly just me dear – looks to me like the BJ community consensus is you are the twit. A racist twit at that.
A word of advice though. You keep squawking that people keep misreading your comments. Consider that it is not our reading comprehension, but your inability to write in such a way that you are conveying the ideas you are trying to express.
Unless you really are trying to let us all know what a creepy dude you are – in which case, success! Congratulations on being Yet Another Internet Creeper.
La Gata Gris
@Spatula: It is hardly just me dear – looks to me like the BJ community consensus is you are the twit. A racist twit at that.
A word of advice though. You keep squawking that people keep misreading your comments. Consider that it is not our reading comprehension, but your inability to write in such a way that you are conveying the ideas you are trying to express.
Unless you really are trying to let us all know what a creepy dude you are – in which case, success! Congratulations on being Yet Another Internet Creeper.
La Gata Gris
@Spatula: It is hardly just me dear – looks to me like the BJ community consensus is you are the twit. A racist twit at that.
A word of advice though. You keep squawking that people keep misreading your comments. Consider that it is not our reading comprehension, but your inability to write in such a way that you are conveying the ideas you are trying to express.
Unless you really are trying to let us all know what a creepy dude you are – in which case, success! Congratulations on being Yet Another Internet Creeper.
Yutsano
@La Gata Gris:
WE HAVE A WINNAH!!
La Gata Gris
Dammit!! Sorry about the multiple postings – right when I hit ‘submit comment’ my computer went wonky and did that crazy multipost all on its own.
Also, forgot a *not* before *conveying*.
Sigh.
Spatula
@Yutsano:
Or MAYBE…YOU disagree with ME purely for the sake of being a contrarian. Yes, I believe that is it.
This is one of the dumber tropes among the dominant BJ masturbatariat.
I imagine the freaks at RedState use the same brilliant rejoinder on people who disagree with them.
I think what intrigues me is mocking and challenging the kind of brainless center/right groupthink that passes itself off as progressivism here. It continues to shock me at how brainlessly tribal this place generally is, even though its blogmaster does not evince the same level of cluelessness as many of his most faithful kool kids.
At this point, I generally believe that Cole is just pulling the strings and posts whatever he thinks will keep page hits the highest.
JR in WV
@Donut:
Well, I’ve had MY last Chick-bigot sandwich, and I’ve attended my last Baptist church service (about 50 years ago with my Cub Scout pack)…
Friends with an Episcopal minister who was flying beside a more fundy praise and prosperity minister, and he asked my friend what the “take was”… the fundy “minister” was amazed to learn that the “take” went to the church and the organization, and my friend was paid a salary and benefits, not a percent of the take.
I guess I already knew all that, surprised the Episcopal didn’t, but if that’s where you always went to church…