Is this what the faith I was raised in is coming to?  I guess…

Sunday School Teacher Fired For Being A Woman

First he dismissed 81-year-old Mary Lambert from the Diaconate Board of the First Baptist Church along with two members, claiming there were attendance issues.

Now the Rev. Timothy LaBouf has dismissed Mary Lambert as a Sunday School teacher for an adult class after she’s been on the job for over 50 years, claiming that his interpretation of the Bible is that a woman is prohibited from teaching men.

Lambert has been a church member for 54 years and a long time Sunday School teacher but got a letter dated Aug. 9 from LaBouf and the board saying that the Bible says a woman can perform any job, as long as its outside of the church.

LaBouf, who has been pastor at the church for about two years, and is also a member of the Watertown City Council, quotes the first epistle to Timothy which hold "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent".

Lambert received the letter signed by Kendra LaBouf, wife of the pastor. "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission" the letter said. "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became sinner".
 

Well…what the man does in his own church is his business I suppose…right?  I’m sure his knuckle dragging fundamentalist hatred for women won’t influence his decisions as a city councilman…

The Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who also serves on the Watertown City Council, issued a statement saying his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader in Watertown, where all five members of the council are men but the city manager who runs the city’s day-to-day operations is a woman.

Of course it won’t.

Something I hadn’t heard about the recent Bin Laden rant, is that he wants the Danish cartoonists who drew Mohammad extradited…to al Qaeda.  For a fair trial of course…

Al Qaeda’s leader focused much of his almost 52-minute message on what he continually referred to as “a Zionist-crusader war on Islam,” which he said was shown most explicitly by the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Muslims consider it sacrilegious to produce a likeness of Mohammad, and the cartoons sparked violent protests throughout the Muslim world.

He said the cartoon controversy was “too serious for an apology” and was the most serious aspect of the alleged war against Islam.

Now, in a babbling rant that touched on “…what he called the slaughter of Muslims in places such as Palestine, Bosnia, Kashmir and Chechnya”, you’d think he’d rank that slaughter at least a tad higher then twelve cartoons of Mohammed.  But…no.  In the screaming mental chaos of the religious fanatic, bloodshed isn’t nearly as offensive as defiance.

He called for the extradition of those responsible for drawing and publishing the cartoons to be tried by al Qaeda, just as he said the United States and United Nations had demanded he be turned over after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“We demand that their governments hand them over to us to be judged by the law of Allah,” he said.

“This request is from the category of treating in kind, and we say to you, if you have not forgotten, let us remind you that when you announced Osama bin Laden was accused of striking at American interests, you issued a [U.N.] Security Council resolution which was passed unanimously declaring the extradition of Osama was mandatory despite no evidence being provided,” bin Laden said.

Al Qaeda has previously claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

In kind.  In kind.  He really thinks that drawing cartoons of Mohammed is worse then killing Muslims.  Perhaps he’d like a few more then.  I’d certainly rather draw cartoons then kill anyone.

Damn…I’m going to be so happy when we finally have a president who wants to go after that bastard.

They’re remembering the death of pope John Paul this week, and in couple more it’ll be the ascendancy of pope Ratzinger.  So since my weekly cartoon is late again (I did another sleep clinic at Hopkins which really mucked up my weekend…), I’ll try and bribe you with a re-run:

And that’s pretty much been the way it’s been with Ratzinger: 

Calling same-sex unions “pseudo-matrimony” the pope said: “The various forms of the dissolution of matrimony today, like free unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex, are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man.”

Although was his first public comment on same-sex marriage since becoming Pope, Benedict had long history of attacking same-sex unions. 

As Cardinal Ratzinger he was the Vatican’s most outspoken opponent of gay marriage.

He was the author of the a 2003 Vatican directive to priests around the world calling for a proactive stand to stop governments from legalizing same-sex marriage and for a repeal of those those already on the books that give rights, including adoption, to gay couples. (story)

In just a year Ratzinger took John-Paul’s various assaults on the humanity of homosexual people, removed the paternalistic veneer from them, and turned it all into a relentless machine.  And now worldwide, violence toward homosexuals is on the rise.  Imagine that.  You’d think the Catholic church would know better then to go down this path again…

We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between “anti-Judaism” and “antisemitism”; between Christian Jew-hatred as a “necessary but insufficient” cause of the Holocaust; between the “sins of the children” and the sinlessness of the Church as such.  These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal. 

-James Carroll, “Constantine’s Sword”

…but hate takes away all reason.  In another year people will be marveling at how Ratzinger managed to make the climate for gays and lesbians even worse then he already had.  And that hostile climate will in turn, kill more innocent people.