Nobody expects the Minnesota Inquisition…

The Assumption Church, a Catholic congregation in Barnesville, Minnesota, does not mess around when it comes to fighting followers who support marriage equality.

The church’s priest, Rev. Gary LaMoine, told the family of 17-year old Lennon Cihak that he cannot participate in his scheduled confirmation because Cihak shared his opposition to the recently defeated amendment that would define marriage as one man and one woman.

Not only that, LaMoine is now denying Communion to the entire family, including Cihak’s parents, who have attended the church for decades.

It’s something to remind me how glad I am, even at this stage in my life, that I was raised a Baptist, if only for the satisfaction of knowing I’d have been on the pope’s shit list for that fact alone, never mind my homosexuality. The only thing better would be to have been born a Jew.  

But more importantly, being raised in a Baptist household meant I was never taught to believe I had to ask permission from the clergy to have a spiritual relationship with my creator. I will probably never really understand how painful this all is for that family, and especially that boy who is now afraid his church won’t allow him to be buried with his parents, simply because he stood up for the human dignity of his neighbors. I want to tell them there is no shame in walking out that door and never looking back. But I know that isn’t their way. You have to let everyone find their own way. That was something else the faith of my childhood taught me.

I’m an atheist now, and I can only watch these things happening to good-hearted people from a respectful distance.   Meanwhile the boy inside me who once went dutifully to church every Sunday wonders how anyone would want to take the body of Christ from the hand of someone who is pissing on his cross.

[Edited…there was something else about being raised in a Baptist household that in retrospect I needed to get in here…]