When I saw this information, I was so mad I felt like spitting NAILS!
As an eighteen year long Unitarian Universalist (really, I was one all my life, but never knew it until 18 years ago) who has gotten NOTHING but love, support, and affirmation from the Unitarian Universalist Chruch - I am APPALLED that this group, who was sponsored by a local Southern Baptist congregation - could engage in such hateful activities...in the name of Christianity, no less.
As a transgender person, The Unitarians reached out to me with love, support, and affirmation. The Christians COULD have done so...instead they chose to shun, hate and reject me...they chose to support discrimination against me, and they chose to support, or sit silent, while other forms of violence were directed at me.
We cannot sit silent while this group directs this sort of violence at another entire faith. In light of the incident in Knoxville, Tennessee's Unitarian Church a couple of years ago, these people who were attending service, in New Orleans, when this happened...must have been TERRIFIED. I know I would have been!
I call upon the Southern Baptist Convention to denounce these activities directed against another organized faith tradition - and to denounce the actions of Operation Save America...and to denounce the congregation in New Orleans that sponsored them.
Imagine coming to church for worship, and then having your silent prayer interrupted with "Abomination! You're going to hell! Synagogue of Satan!"
That's what happened last Sunday in New Orleans, when a group of anti-abortion protestors disrupted the worship service at First Unitarian Universalist Church. This week they went on to stage other aggressive protests in the area, including picketing outside a doctor's home and holding a mock funeral with an open casket they claimed was an aborted fetus.
No matter how you feel about abortion, there's no justification for the extremist tactics of Operation Save America, which used to be called Operation Rescue. A few years ago, their leader was even convicted of criminal stalking for passing out "wanted" posters with a doctor's face on them.
Operation Save America came to Louisiana at the invitation of a local Southern Baptist congregation, which hosted many of their activities this week.
I think we can all agree that, whatever our differences in our faith may be, NOBODY deserves to have their Sunday service disrupted in this manner, and NOBODY deserves to have their sacred space INVADED like this. I am BEYOND FURIOUS!!!
The question now is whether state and national leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention will condemn these extremist protests -- and commit that their churches will never again be involved in disrupting anyone else's worship.
Please sign the Petition!!
http://act.faithfulamerica.org/...
2:55 PM PT: Update: Thanks for the rec's so far, please keep them coming! This is my first diary, and I see it is already in the top 50 on today's rec list!!