Why Canyon Ridge Christian Church Defends Its $$$ Support of Anti-Gay Pastor
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by Michael A. Jones July 23, 2010 12:30 PM (PT)
Despite pressure to get them to denounce efforts in Uganda to pass legislation criminalizing homosexuality and HIV, Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas continues to support a leading anti-gay Ugandan pastor, Martin Ssempa. They give him money. The feature him on their website as a strategic partner. And they say that Martin Ssempa is leading a new generation of leaders in Africa, and that he's a bold, prophetic person of faith.
Here's how Canyon Ridge Christian Church must define prophetic: "I will not call them gays any more, these are sodomites. And I ask you please, in the media, stop misusing the word gay, which means happy people. These are not happy people … I want to say homosexuals eat each other's poop. Homosexuals stick their hands into their rectum. Homosexuals stick all sorts of deviant sexual things into their rectum."
That's a direct quote from Martin Ssempa from earlier this year. And shockingly enough, it's a bit tame compared to some of his other lines about homosexuality. And to this day, though Martin Ssempa has tried to distance himself from some of the language in the proposed Uganda bill, he's still a diehard supporter of passing this legislation. As written, the bill still includes (a) death sentences for those with HIV who engage in same-sex sexual relations; (b) life imprisonment for anyone who has sex with someone of the same gender; (c) jail time for straight folks who do not out their LGBT friends, neighbors and relatives.
But don't tell Canyon Ridge Christian Church that. They'd rather put on their spin hats, and try to say that western media just doesn't really understand Pastor Martin Ssempa.
Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas is one of the few religious entities that has yet to condemn efforts in Uganda to criminalize homosexuality with the death penalty and/or life in prison. Instead, Canyon Ridge Christian Church praises the work of Ugandan Pastor Martin Ssempa, who is one of the leading religious figures in Uganda working to pass harsh anti-gay legislation. Ssempa travels around Uganda stirring religious fervor against homosexuality, openly calling for gay people to be executed.
Is this the type of ministry that Canyon Ridge Christian Church believes is prophetic? Why are they holding up the work of Martin Ssempa, and why haven't they publicly condemned efforts to kill or imprison gay people, and their straight alleis, in Uganda?
It's time to demand better from Canyon Ridge Christian Church. Send their leaders and ministers a message that as a faith-based body, they should join with religious leaders from around the globe in condemning Uganda's "Kill the Gays" bill. It's unacceptable for a Church, which claims to be a place for "God's grace and forgiveness," to support efforts to kill gay people in Uganda, and/or the ministers and ministries pushing to kill gay people in Uganda.
To send this letter to Canyon Ridge use link below:
hXXp://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/why_canyon_ridge_christian_church_defends_its_financial_support_of_anti-gay_ugandan_pastor
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How does this 'church' in Vegas get their money, purely from private donations or from corporations also? If it's the latter, are the company names that donate, available to the public??? Shaming those that ultimately fund such lunatic ideas would be a better way of cutting off some of the money and exposing the cult to more bad publicity …as in the recent Target situation over there.
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Actually, "sodomite" has not been applied properly here or in virtually every case for centuries.
The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were that they didn't treat their "guests" well.
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more likely they didn't obtain the guests' consent to :fufu:
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It had nothing to do with sex, but hospitality or the lack thereof.
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ah… i guess i have to reread that chapter again... i may have misread the meaning. The hazards of reading the bible like a storybook >:D
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You'll need to read more than just that part. Many cities were accused of committing the sins of Sodom. The one thing you will notice is that while they are said to have committed the same sin, there is no mention of sex.
Even the use of "to know" does not mean that it was necessarily about sex. There are 914 confirmed cases where "to know" means literally that, to know something/someone. On the other hand there are less than 20 confirmed cases of "to know" meaning sex.
Even if we exclude the other cities that committed the same sin of inhospitality, there is no clear evidence that "to know" in the case of Sodom had anything to do with sex. The region was war torn and some strangers suddenly appear, so the town's men wanted to know them. Why are we supposed to automatically assume that means they wanted to fuck them?! It would make more sense that the town's men wanted to meet them and find out who they are. This makes even more sense when you consider that, in order to keep the men from attacking the strangers, Abraham offers up his daughters for sex if they will leave the men alone. Now why would a man offer his daughters up for sex to a bunch of gays?! That makes no sense.
Of the 5 cities {Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim and Bela—also called Zoar} that were destroyed that night, only Sodom is supposed to have been destroyed for homosexuality, yet they all committed the exact same sins. So why hasn't any of the other cities been labelled as fag cities?!
