Earlier today, Pastor Sean Harris raised the white flag and apologized for his sermon this past Sunday in which he gave "special dispensation" to the parents in his flock to give their kids "a good punch" if they were acting gay.
I should not have said what I said about “cracking,” “punching,” and particular bias toward outward attraction of girls. Nor should I have used the words “special dispensation.” I did not say that children should be squashed. I have never suggested children or those in the LGBT lifestyle should be beaten, punched, abused (physically or psychologically) in any form or fashion. The gospel is the only source of power sufficient to deliver anyone from the power, penalty, and presence of all forms of sin including, but not limited to, all forms of sexual immorality including homosexuality.
Harris characterizes this as a full retraction of his words from Sunday. That's a pretty big turn-around from yesterday, when he took to his blog to claim his words had been
taken out of context and told
The Fayetteville Observer that
it was only a joke. Methinks someone must have told Harris that had anyone in his flock actually taken him up on his advice, he'd have been in deep legal doo-doo. Even when you take that into consideration, he deserves a good deal more credit than Patrick Wooden, the Durham pastor who made news earlier this year with his hateful and uninformed suggestion that gays have serious health problems.
Speaking as a reality-based born-again Christian, though, one thing still disturbs me about this whole affair. It says a lot about fundie culture that Harris could even think about saying such things. If you'll remember, last October a pastor in Tennessee had a bunch of men beat up his own gay son. I wondered how in the world even the most virulent homophobe could even contemplate having his own son beaten senseless. Looks like this sermon by Harris provides a pretty good answer about the kind of mentality that made such an incident possible. Indeed, if you look at a raw video of Harris preaching on Sunday, there's almost no apprehension at all on the part of the congregation. That's almost as disturbing as Harris' words themselves.
What this episode proves, though, is just how far we have to go in order to not only remove the second-class status of LGBT people, but to clean up the level of rhetoric in this country.