From: kwr@crash.cts.com (Keith W. Ramsey)
Subject: Re: The vener...no...stupid Mr. White
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 19:51:54 GMT

In article <3job12$iij$1@mhadg.production.compuserve.com> Buddy Beaudoin <76153.3315@CompuServe.COM> writes:

>Physical violence is not meted out by born-again Christians. 

Hmm, perhaps you should inform the pastor of Potter's House Christian 
Fellowship of that "fact", Buddy.  Two years ago he led about twenty members 
of his congregation -- a charismatic, bible-based, Christian church, complete 
with healings, tongues, and demon-expulsions -- in an effort to disrupt the 
local Gay Pride parade and festival here in San Diego.  

His efforts included shouting verbal abuse at those watching the parade and 
smashing one of their protest signs over the head of an observer with such 
violence that the victim required medical attention.  (Along similar lines, 
during an "evangelistic outreach" by members of that Christian fellowship into 
the predominantly Gay San Diego neighborhood of Hillcrest, in which the 
evangelists stood on street corners and shouted, literally, their "good news", 
they also shouted, with equal ferver "Kill a Queer for Jesus! Bullets here, 29 
cents!")

I called the pastor afterward and asked him what action he had taken to 
discipline the individual who had broken the sign over the bystander's head.  
His reply? No action was taken.  In fact, he endorsed the act of violence.  He 
further said that a number of the people attending his church were "former 
gang members" so the people of San Diego's Gay community "better watch it".  
In short, he threatened gangland style violence against Gays in San Diego.  

The whole point of his "evangelistic outreach" efforts, he said, was to make 
Gays feel ashamed of themselves and to stir up non-Gays against them.  He had 
no interest in "saving" them or in leading them to Christ.  His whole intent 
was to cause harm.

Incidentally, his main method of stirring his congregation to violence against 
Gays was to refer to them, during church services, as "fags", "homos", and 
"sodomites".  That exactly echoes, Buddy, language you routinely use here on 
a.p.h.  I cannot help but draw the conclusion, then, that your intention must 
also echo the intention of the pastor at Potter's House -- to stir people to 
violence against Gays.

Now then, with examples such as yourself and this pastor, who both, as 
Christians, represent Jesus in his absence, why do you suppose anyone -- 
particularly anyone Gay -- might be interested in becoming Christian?  Your 
hyperbole of judgement and violence is disgusting and sinful, and your 
contention that you so speak in God's name is blasphemous.  

-Keith