Maybe we should hang the Ten Commandments everywhere

So many Christians seem to forget what they are, and they need a reminder. For instance, while many Christians are under the impression that one of the commandments is, "Thou shalt not butt-fuck," in fact this is not so. However, and this may shock many out there, one of the commandments is, "Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbor."

I am reminded of this because I got an email from a supposed Christian organization American Family Organization (I subscribe so I have my pulse on what is offensive to Christians--apparently two men holding hands in public is a far greater threat to our moral fortitude than torturing and killing Muslims. Good to know.) today that is full of false witness against the city of Philadelphia. In this letter, they claim that freedom of speech and religion protects assault and abuse, as long as they are done in the name of Jesus and against gay people.

When they tried to speak, they were surrounded by a group of radical homosexual activists dubbed the Pink Angels. A videotape of the incident shows the Pink Angels interfering with the Christians’ movement on the street, holding up large pink symbols of angels to cover up the Christians' messages and blowing high pitched whistles to drown out their preaching.

Rather than arrest the homosexual activists and allow the Christians to exercise their First Amendment rights, the Philadelphia police arrested and jailed the Christians!

Homosexual activists thinking they have First Amendment rights! Of course they were cruising for a beatdown.

What were these fine young Christian men charged with? Reading the Bible in public? No, apparently the city is under the impression that they did something far more serious.

They were charged with eight crimes, including three felonies: possession of instruments of crime (a bullhorn), ethnic intimidation (saying that homosexuality is a sin), and inciting a riot (reading from the Bible some passages relating to homosexuality) despite the fact that no riot occurred.

Here's pictures of these guys not rioting some more at The Dark Window.

The paranoid right has flocked around this case. I had to sort throught a bunch of articles on Google from World Net and the like that pretty much claim that first you have laws against trolling for gays to bash and next you lock people up for owning Bibles before I found a single article from a newspaper about the incident. Here's one article from a more reliable source, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Fahling said a video of the Oct. 10 confrontation showed Marcavage speaking through a bullhorn while he and his supporters were being shouted down by irate gay activists.

City officials said the video did not show the start of the confrontation, when they said Marcavage tried to interrupt a performance with his antigay preaching and then disobeyed a police order to move to the perimeter of the Outfest to avoid the potential for violence.

Damn them! They saw through our selective editing of the video. Who would have thought that judges would be so clever?

XGW has some interesting insight on this anti-gay group Repent America. Their site is a darling example of the inclusiveness that Christ preached about in his lifetime with two buttons to enter--one for Christians and one for not Christians. Being fair-minded, I pressed the not-Christian button and was greeted with this:

Are you good enough to go to Heaven?

My guess is no. They have the Ten Commandments on this page, too, so they must have noticed that homosexuality isn't one of the biggies. Ack, details.

I clicked over to the Christian button, since I'm going to hell anyway, and found it decorated with wonderful, Christ-like photos of aborted fetuses and the like. Their membership is mostly young men, and it's just so irresistable to wonder if maybe they wouldn't be so damn tense if they got laid once in awhile. They also have a bunch of pictures in the photo gallery of happy couples getting married in San Francisco. I suppose these pictures are supposed to generate a disgust reaction, but mostly I find myself happy for the couples. I imagine that if I was lonely, though, I would have quite a bit of envy mixed in with anger while looking at these pictures. I'm just sayin'.