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Edited on Sun Aug-31-08 07:17 PM by igil
I was in a fundie church for a while. The choir director was a bit of an iconoclast, and the old prude brigade didn't like him. They considered him a wrong fit for the choir director job, and tried to get him fired. They failed; he was a good composer, talented conductor, great baritone, could play keyboard and oboe, worked well with the kids and the choir. But he wasn't "right".
His kids were a bit wild, on the surface. One left home asap to be a flight attendant. She came back, laid off after 3 months, but had gotten drunk with a pilot during that time and got into bed with him. The next day he apologized, said he was a louse, and avoided her. A month after she was laid off, the pregnancy test came back positive. Little Stevie appeared 6 months later.
The church was, by and large, great. She turned responsible. Her younger brother, also wild, saw that she had made a mistake, and that most people took it in stride.
Except the old prude brigade. They wanted to know who the daddy was. They couldn't actually believe what was said; the girl, a fornicator, must also be a liar. And her father, who actually cracked jokes about sex, deserved no good will. As good Christians, it was their place to judge, to ridicule, to hate, loathe, and raise all kinds of questions. After all, it's just a question, right? (Hey--are we sure Obama's dad really is the Kenyan deadbeat dad, and not some basketball player that date-raped his ma one night when she was high and drunk? Hey, just a question! What did I say?)
"Daddy", by a horrible misfortune, lived a mile from the choir director, with his wife and two teenage kids. The girl didn't want to break up their family; she had asked around, and the pilot didn't have a rep as a predator. He made a mistake, and the girl was happy enough with the results. She told her parents who the father was; and a couple of friends, me included in them. Her parents approved. She stayed with them, and they raised the kid together when he was born.
The pious prudes would have none of it. She was told she was covering sin, worse than the sin itself. She said she was showing forgiveness and allowing for the guy to repent and tell his wife. (He did, his wife was pissed, and they never told the kids, as far as I know. And child support was immediately forthcoming.) I side with her. The pious prudes wanted to destroy a family instead of help the people involved.
Months later, a rumor surfaced: The choir director was the boy's father, which started out as, "Are we sure that the boy isn't the choir director's kid? They have the same color hair". Uh-huh. They found a way to try to damage the choir guy's rep, for their own personal use, in a way that they found titillating.
They couldn't face the consequences.
The choir director's wife nearly had a nervous breakdown. She refused to stay in the house the church rented at very low rates to them, and moved out. The pious prudes said to fire the choir director because his wife wasn't attending, and because he couldn't "keep his household in subjection" or some such nonsense. They denied any responsibility for their evil.
The choir director's inlaws couldn't come to town for services--they were in a neighboring city. Friends they'd had for 40 years had said that basically her husband had humped her daughter, and she was too stupid, weak, or immoral to care. The pious prude brigade was told *not* to go to where they attended, and the pious prudes about crapped their pants. They were the victims. The inlaws were hateful people.
The choir director's mother, who also knew the pious prudes for decades, told them to go and stuff the church organ up their asses. The pious prudes called for her--a good alto and organist--to not be allowed to attend until she apologized.
The church music program vanished for 6 months because the choir director couldn't bring himself to attend services. The pious prudes whined that they hated singing hymns without accompaniment, and demanded that the choir director be fired for non-performance of duties.
The kids were the worst, having just been convinced by the majority that the church wasn't hateful and judgmental. The girl had been told that she was essentially her father's lover. The son went off the deep end at outrage over the abuse heaped on his sister, his father, and the hurt done to his relatives. They got their revenge as only they could.
The girl showed up her last day dressed like a hooker. Skimpy top laced loosely from just above nipple to just below breast, miniskirt with a slit up to her left hip, black fishnet stockings and stiletto heels (ok, "movie hooker"). Painted and coiffed to match. "Outrageous?" "Why, Mabel, I'm just living up to your expectations. Don't you *like* being right?" She personally flirted with every one of the male pious prudes, and insisted on calling the female one's by appropriate names, as well, until she finally got too pissed off and told them that maybe that was their problem--they needed to get laid after at least 40 years of no sex with their husbands, "not that anybody could blame your husbands."
The son waited until the following week. He showed up in black leather. Now, this church ended services with a hymn and a closing prayer. One guy would say some sort of prayer (free form, no set words) while the rest bowed their heads and studied their feet. Also note that while there was a door at the back of the hall, there was a side door "pulpit" right that led to the parking lot, and a side door "pulpit left" that led to a hall that led to an equipment room and another exit). When we said "amen" and looked up, some of us laughed reflexively. Most didn't. Zack had decided that he'd have fun. He had walked in front of where the gaggle of pious prudes sat and dropped his pants and underwear, bending over. The pious prudes looked up to be greated by a rather scrawny white ass staring them in the face, cheeks spread. He stood up after a respectful moment, turned around to show that he'd been a bit busy while facing away from them, and told the Christ-hating self-righteous Pharisees to go fuck themselves if they couldn't bring themselves to figure out what Christianity was supposed to do, and if they needed reminding as to how it went, well ... (then he thrust his hips a few times and wagged his erect dick). Only *then* did he start to pull up his pants, while walking out the side door.
The pious prudes had gazes of pious self-righteous injury. I laughed at them, too. In their faces. And said that that's the *least* of what they deserved.
The following week the minister found the guts to give a sermon on the matter and go against the pious prudes. He said that the next person he caught even mentioning the rumor would be gone, unless they stood up and publicly apologized to everybody involved at services; nobody could be a Christian, or even claim minimal empathy, sympathy, and compassion--or intelligence--and stick to that filth. The following week the choir director was back. Alone.
All the pious prudes were still there. Livid with hate at not having their viciousness termed compassion, their hate termed love, and their pettiness termed honor. They were so incredibly, impossibly, outrageously self-deluded they thought they were right and righteous.
It took months for choir director's wife, his mother, and his inlaws to get over their personal affronts. His wife never did fully re-commit to the church. The son decided that the Army was more compassionate that the church, so he enlisted.
So much hate, so much contempt, such a lack of good will, utter absence of sympathy, a void of intellectual rigor, bitterness and impotence, all bound up in a little bundle termed "goodness" and "compassion" and "being right". And such a depth of blindness at not being able to see it, even when pointed out over and over that their self-righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees, and going on the attack.
Pitiful, really. Truly pitiful, warped excuses for humanity, they were.
And I see it again, old politics, the politics of personal destruction, so hated when it's turned against one of the pure and righteous, whatever his acts, and so admired and honored when turned against one of the hated sinful cretins, whatever their acts. The attempts to say that it's innocent, that it's justice, that it hurts and cannot hurt anybody, that it's actually just critical thinking and compassion that feeds the hate and blindness.
So much self-delusion termed enlightenment. The attitudes of the most retrograde of the fundies in my old fundie church, so retrograde that the other fundies found them repulsive and reptilian, termed "progressive".
Tschau.
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