Responding to the United Methodist Church disrepect to the LGBT and their trash moves.
If a religion is homophobic, it is a stupid religion.
Subscriptions are free.
UPDATE:
Turns out that the recent changes mean even less than I realized. Highland Park Methodist refuses Gay marriages.
Also, this wasn’t revealed by the Dallas Morning News, but by the Christian Post.
UMC North Texas Conference Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr., whose regional body includes Highland Park UMC, affirms the willingness to tolerate different views on the issue among congregations.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/umc-megachurch-wont-host-same-sex-weddings.html
It is time to tell Christians to stop with their nonsense and bogus behavior.
I am avoiding a dozen vulgarities that come to mind. My anger over the United Methodists Church (UMC)and their casual silliness and shenanigans is great. Their self-congratulating behavior trivializes our humanity. Examining what they have done closely shows that it truly trivial and trivializes our humanity. Their paternalistic conceits are insufferable.
It is time the LGBT adopt a brass knuckles and resolute approach to Christians that in anyway diminish, even by the slightest amount, our humanity. If we don’t, we demonstrate that we don’t believe in our humanity either.
After reading the ten articles published by the Dallas Morning News about the UMC and all their follies, I decided that someone needs to take a stand.
I wrote and mailed 141 eight-page letters, to all the UMC Bishops, active and retired, in the world, as well as UMC members mentioned in the Dallas Morning News articles.
It might be asked what do I hope to accomplish. Surely at the most the UMC bishops will just gurgle sentimental things. The African Bishops get called out, but at most they will be momentarily annoyed. Though it will be good for the UMC to know that there are some LGBT who realize their actions are garbage.
The eight-page letter will serve to instruct the LGBT as to the lack of substance of the UMC’s recent actions and their toxicity regarding our humanity. In particular it will show that the UMC recent actions regarding the LGBT, are really late actions to save themselves in a world where homophobia is less and less tolerated.
Admitting LGBT to be members of the straight people’s religion, is not the glorious thing the UMC thinks it is.
I also think it is important to set an example of forceful rejections of paternalistic Christian by both denunciation and action. Mailing 141 eight-page letters is what one person can do, and hopefull start the rest of the LGBT to be critical of the UMC. Further, it creates a framework to assess other so-called progressive Christians stuff and nonsense.
The letters to Africa are in the blue box, to the Philippines in the green box, and to Eruope in the Purple box. (Picture will be in online version.)
Below as photographed.
A couple clowns I especially wanted to send copies of the letter to.
Jerry Kulah was a clown from African Initiative who was upset that LGBT were going to be tolerated.
All the envelops had at lease on Year of the Rabbit stamp, in deference to the Taoist Gay Rabbit God and his temple in Taipei. It was a subconscious cue to the persons receiving the letter that the European dominance which spread Christianity to the world with imperial power is no longer present in our current multipolar world. Doubt they will notice.
The following is the Dallas Voice’s clueless reporting on the UMC.
https://dallasvoice.com/a-new-day-in-the-united-methodist-church/
The Letter
The was address to the UMC bishop for Dallas Episcopal Area, and 141 additional copies mailed around the world.
To the bishops, there were nine letters to the Philippines, nineteen letters to Africa, fifteen to Eurasia (mostly Europe), and 85 letters to the United States. Twelve letters were addressed, to churches, mostly local, in which one or more UMC members were mentioned by the Dallas Morning News. One letter went to an organization adovcating for the LGBT in the UMC.
The following is the letter, excepting where the letter contained links to this newsletter, and so the Substack preview is shown instead, and for YouTube links, substack will convert them to embedded videos. The images seen were in the letter. My address is redacted for security purposes, but the letter to them had my address. Links have been submitted to the Internet Archive.
May 12, 2024
Edward H. Sebesta
Dallas, Texas 75XXX
Bishop Ruben Saenz
Dallas Episcopal Area – United Methodist Church
P.O. Box 866188
Plano, Texas 75086-6188
Dear Bishop Saenz:
Some poisons are obvious, they taste bitter, they have noxious smells, they perhaps burn tissue on contact. Others might be sugar coated and pleasing, but still toxic. Where as the Southern Baptists, the various non-denominational churches, and other delulu Evangelical churches are obvious poisons, the United Methodist Church (UMC) reminds me of the scene in the movie, “Wizard of Oz,” where Dorothy is poisoned by poppies. If you are not familiar with this cultural reference, here is a YouTube link.
The Gay community needs to understand toxicities of all types, the obvious and the subtle, and this letter to you, and copies to all the bishops of the United Methodist Church, active and retired, as listed at the following link will serve as an exposition of the trivialization of the humanity of the LGBT by the UMC and so be instructive to LGBT. The following link is a list of a UMC webpage archived 5/11/2024 UMT giving a listing of all the UMC bishops active and retired.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240511012619/https://www.unitedmethodistbishops.org/
This letter will also be useful to Gays when friends, relatives, or others want to tell them what a great thing the UMC has done. Gays will be able to shut that discussion down right away. Treating us with respect and not defective is a basic minimum for Gays, it is not some paternalistic gift.
Gays need to forcefully confront self-serving behavior at their expense, and certainly by this letter with its copies being sent out to all the UMC bishops, will serve as an example.
This letter to you is online as an instructional to the LGBT at:
Recently, it has been in the news that the UMC at a convention decided to eliminate bans on gay clergy and same-sex marriage. I provide links to the ten articles in the Dallas Morning News (DMN) at the end of this letter.
The members of the UMC in these DMN articles have been somewhat self-congratulatory, paternalistic, self-serving and misrepresenting. Worse it is presented as some type victory for Gays in general.
The attitude of Gays should be, “It is up to Christianity to figure out how Christianity can exist in a universe where Gays exist, not for Gays to figure out how they can fit into Christianity.”
It is with this perspective the recent changes in the UMC can be properly seen.
First thing, allowing Gays with a diminished sense of self-worth as Gay people to be equal members in the straight people’s religion is hardly all that great of a thing.
Gays who continue to be members of the UMC will be a small minority in a church of nearly all straight people, with straight cultural norms. These Gays will strive to be just like straight people and be in denial that the cultural and religious norms of the members of the UMC are just straight cultural and religious norms, but rather some type of universal norms.
Second, it really isn’t equality. There is a plan where the UMC will accept Gays here in the United States, but allow other UMC regions to continue to be bigoted towards Gays, and UMC members even think this is a great thing, because it is unity. You wouldn’t for unity with a community with white supremacist churches.
I actually own a copy of the 1844 Methodist General Convention in which slaveowners are not accepted and the Methodist church split.
This is about the scandal of U.S. aid going to anti-Gay churches in Africa.
Are you going to be continuing to send aid to anti-Gay churches in Africa?
This regionalization plan makes it clear that the humanity of Gays isn’t taken seriously.
Third, it took the UMC a long, long, looong time to even do what it did this year. The first Gay Pride Parade was in 1970, and now, 54 years later, over two and half generations later, you finally get around to deciding Gays can be given some local equality. As the saying goes, better late than never. Though with the rate of decline of Christianity, never would likely work just as well in the reduction of Christian homophobes.
This decision might have been significant in the last century, but in 2024, you are just slow and out of touch.
What would have been significant if in 2023 the UMC called out the DMN for misrepresenting the “He Gets Us,” campaign as not being homophobic. Or if some members were present when we were picketing Stedfast Baptist Church, in Cedar Hill, which calls for the government execution of Gays, or were present at BuzzBrew when there was a Christian led anti-drag campaign.
It would have been good if the UMC had spoken out against Paula Dardaganian inane letter to the editor published in the DMN which in commenting on the Stedfast Baptist church she explained that if Gays are to be punished, it is god’s responsibility not the government’s, leaving untouched the issue of whether Gays would be punished by God at all. It was a pernicious letter and was a priority for me to take apart.
Being embedded in a group protesting Stedfast Baptist, I brought up how often a systematic plan to deal with homophobic Christianity faces the derailing tactic of someone saying, “That is not true Christianity.” A response by one person was, “Where were they when we were protesting Stedfast?” A good question.
Fourth, is that this belated tolerance is really an opportunistic adaptation to the acceptance of Gays in the United States. It is about benefiting the UMC and not social justice or being beneficial to Gays. Where Gays are not accepted, the UMC will be homophobic and where Gays are accepted the UMC won’t be. It really isn’t for Gays, but for the self-preservation of the UMC.
Although Gays are just about 3% of the population, Gays have parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces. They have co-workers, friends, colleagues in professional societies. If you assessed what percentage of the population is related or are friends with a Gay person that percentage is likely very high, likely over 50%. These relatives and friends may have various attitudes about Gays and feelings about homosexuality, but they don’t want to see the Gay person they know harmed or discrimination to impact their Gay relative or friend. They see negatively those religious groups which are prejudiced against Gays.
Even the hateful Evangelicals work to represent their homophobia as love, they denounce hostile statements against Gays and they try to avoid being seen as targeting Gays. They work to have some type of program for Evangelical parents to maintain some type of relationship with LGBT children without compromising their homophobia. http://marycomm.com/consulting/resources/uncommon-love-bible-study/
The UMC accepting Gays will lessen the chance that people, sympathetic to Gays, will consider members of the UMC as being obnoxious. However, where homophobia is socially dominating, like Africa, the UMC will be homophobic.
Such a chameleon faith!
Gays are also truly global. If people live someplace, there are Gay people there. In some non-Christian nations it probably isn’t good to be known as crazy with homophobia.
Christianity is currently declining rapidly. On a historical time scale, compared to the decline of religions historically, Christianity is essentially in free fall. The homophobic actions and rantings of Christians have been and are currently a major factor in this decline.
The shattering of mainline Protestant denominations is a demonstration of the power of the love and concern by the general public for our welfare over the dogmatism and prejudice of Christianity against us. Imagine what Gays could do if they had a focused coherent project to deal with Christianity not defined by the begging of Gay Christians for acceptance.
Fifth, there is a story in the Dallas Morning News where a Gay person is saying he felt broken, but now that he can be a member of the United Methodist Church he is not broken. The only thing that was broken about him, was that he lacked a sense of self-worth as a Gay person.
If a religion is anti-Gay, it is a stupid religion.
It didn’t occur to this person, that the Bible, a haphazard product of history, written by ethnic group with a very parochial existence and a vicious temperament more than 20 centuries ago, might not have validity in the present. (The murderous sections what to do to those who aren’t Christian really put the capital V in vicious.”)
This is a person for whom the intoxication of being a holy one, and also a continuing drama of being persecuted, overwhelmed common sense and any sense of self-worth as a Gay person.
Gay Christians are pernicious since they think that their agenda is the agenda of the Gay community, which is largely dropping Christianity. Gay Christians are pernicious because they are always dragging our right to breath into the Bible and dependent on the outcome of convoluted theological arguments rather than that we live in a secular state and not a theocracy.
Sixth, for your pandering to the African bishops’ homophobia, you might consider the following statement: “You are likely Christians because of some empire, Roman, Spanish or other European.” Though, another historical origin of present-day Christians is that their ancestors were enslaved by Europeans. The Christian faiths of descendants of slaves in the Americas are historical markers of which white people enslaved them, mostly Protestants in America, excepting Louisiana and Mobile, mostly Catholic in Haiti and Brazil.
Consider what the historical root cause is behind Thailand being Buddhist and less than 1% being Christian and Vietnam having more Catholics than Buddhists. Or why in Japan a little over 1% are Christian, whereas in the Philippines about 89% are Christian. How many Filipinos would be Methodist has the Philippines War of Independence been won?
The drastic decline of Christianity among the Māori is explained in this article, fully available online and free, “Māori atheism: a decolonizing project?”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1177083X.2024.2333544
This is a good summary article on what happened to the indigenous religions in Africa, “How Christianity and Islam decimated Africa’s traditional religions.”
Before you attempt to distract from the message in this article by wailing about the Hindu Post, you need to consider that it is outside the West we have to and need to seek viewpoints and history that don’t pander to Christianity.
Is the opinion of those who haven’t decolonized really important? The African bishops might consider the soft-power of East Asian BL dramas, they have an African fan base. They have African YouTube reviewers. The urban young in Africa will at some point regard homophobic clergy as mountebanks and fools.
Seventh, in the 21st century, when imperial gun boats are no longer around, it happens that Christians are themselves persecuted. They present their persecution in these nations to the United States as human rights issues, when they themselves, homophobes, really don’t believe in human rights. In 2018, the opposition to the decriminalization of homosexuality, was fairly solid among Indian Christians.
https://www.ucanews.com/news/india-church-unhappy-with-legalization-of-homosexuality/83280
The real complaint of these Christians is that they aren’t in control of the agenda of who is to be persecuted and who isn’t, and worse, they are on someone else’s agenda as those who are to be persecuted.
I review the hypocrisy in this article.
https://dallasgayliberation.substack.com/p/dallas-morning-news-one-sided-reporting
Gays aren’t alone in considering the behavior of Christians.
The attacks of Korean Christians on pride events there has gotten coverage.
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180909000245
The Christian attacks on Buddhist temples in Korea is noticed also.
https://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=89,11172,0,0,1,0
It appears that in the multipolar world that many people remember the colonial world much less fondly than the West, and they remember the role of Christianity in these imperial systems.
Surely there are opportunities for the LGBT and other groups to work together in defense against Christian aggression, and speak up against bogus Christian human rights complaints.
Eighth, the breakups of mainline denominations do a lot for the defense of the LGBT from Christian aggression. The denominations are smaller, and often no longer global. The denominations like the Global Methodists are clearly homophobic and homophobic enough that their members were willing to break up a major denomination. They won’t have Gay Christians giving lectures about the hopes that they will be tolerated in the future, and even if a Gay member of that denomination does, we can laugh him off.
For those churches that left the UMC and didn’t join the Global Methodist, it will be clear what their motivation regardless what they might say. We have an issue now with stealth homophobia and these churches have red flagged themselves.
The breakups show how limited the possibilities of the Gay Christian agenda is, and an additional reason why the Gay agenda regarding Christianity should not be left to them. The following is an agenda I am suggesting.
Or more comically expressed, in reference to Peter O’Toole’s comedy film, “The Ruling Class,” “To Gays: The 14th Earl of Gurney was abused as long as he was the Lord of Love.”
In summary, I don’t think this letter will have the much effect on United Methodist Church clownery. It might influence the UMC to realize that not being homophobic is not some great paternalistic action, but more about avoiding provoking a group which isn’t powerless, is global and generally better liked.
I think this letter does a fairly good job to explain to the LGBT what the reality of the recent United Methodist Church conference actions are. It is instructive to the LGBT as to some of the elements that a LGBT program against Christian homophobia might be. Again it makes clear to the LGBT that the agenda of the defense against homophobic Christianity shouldn’t be left to Gay Christians.
Sincerely Yours,
Edward H. Sebesta
CC: Eric Folkerth, Kessler Park UMC, Jan Graner of Trinity United Methodist Church in Duncanville, Dr. Ted Campbell of SMU, Tracy Cox & Tracy Merrick of First United Methodist Church of Pittsburg, Jerry Kulah of the Liberian Episcopal Dist., David W. Meredith of Clifton UMC in Cincinnati, Jan Lawrence of Reconciling Ministries, Jessica Vittorio of 1st United Methodist Church of Dallas, Keri Lynn Lucas Creekwood UMC in Allen, Clayton Oliphint 1st UMC of Richardson, Mike House Northaven UMC Dallas, Shandon Klein 1st UMC Richardson, Effie McAvoy, Shepard of the Valley UMC in Hope, Rhode Island, Frank Schaefer of Isla Vista Student Ministry, Goleta, California, Aaron Reindel, 1st UMC Dallas, Elizabeth Moseley 1st UMC Dallas.
7/10/2024 There has been no reply as I expected.
Returned mailings due to obsolete addresses.
Bishop Woodie W. White
Bishop Lawrence McClesky
Bishop David M. Wilson.
Links to Dallas Morning News articles: