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The Christian couple who turned a gay couple away from their guesthouse have been ordered to pay damages by the Supreme Court. You have to admire their persistence. They'd already lost the case at County Court and the Court of Appeal, but hoped that the Supreme Court would see sense and overturn basic human rights. The beauty of Christianity is you can pick and choose which bits you like and this granite-faced pair have chosen to ignore the stuff about not judging people and loving everyone and concentrated on the no gay sex and no sex out of marriage bit (that I don't think Jesus really discussed). Jesus had the last laugh though. He had warned them, "Judge not, lest ye be judged," but they didn't listen.
I know a story about a male human who loved all men and who was turned away from all the guesthouses. Though I think they made the decision because they were full, not because they thought the unborn baby might have sex with someone with a winkie under their roof. You can really only blame Joseph for his poor forward planning on this occasion. It must have been hard to book a room in those pre-phone and pre-internet days, but I am sure he could have got a message to the guest houses somehow (maybe sent an angel on ahead?). But given that, for some reason, the Romans had chosen to do a census which required people to go back to the towns of their distant ancestors (must have been so hard to work out which branch of your family to follow and who had records going back twenty generations then). It must have been utter chaos. No wonder afterwards the Romans chose to eradicate all evidence of this insane census from the history books. Thank goodness for the New Testament mentioning it or we would never have known that it had happened.
The Christian couple seem pretty sure that they are in the right not to let gay or unmarried couples cohabit under their roof. Mike Judge (I am not even joking - his name is Judge - Jesus must be furious about these Christians taking the piss out of one his most famous one-liners) from the Christian Institute, "What this case shows is that the powers of political correctness have reached all the way to the top of the judicial tree, so much so that even the Supreme Court dare not say anything against gay rights." How lame of the Supreme Court to so willfully hold up the law. If they had any balls they would break the law and speak out against people having equal rights regardless of their sexuality or race or sex. But they don't. With their political correctness and also their general correctness and them being correct.
I wonder how God and Jesus feel about this couple and this issue. When these two people sadly die and go to Heaven will God be there saying, "Yup, well done, that's what I wanted you to do. Bloody political correctness. Well done for wasting all that time and money fighting this pointless and hopeless cause, rather than say caring for the poor and needy. I hate that stuff." Or will He be looking at the floor a bit embarrassed and saying, "You really made me look a dick there, you know. And my boy, Jesus." Because it has to be one or the other. God knows the answer.
In a way I feel a bit pissed off with Him for not intervening and just sorting this our during the first case. He could have just appeared and said, "Yup, these people are definitely right and shouldn't have to have gays in their guest house," or, "No, let's save us all the time, these people don't get me AT ALL. Obviously if you run a guest house then you can't start telling people what they can and can't do in your house."
Fuck it, even waiting that long would have been making a bit of a show of it. When the booking was made He could have just sent down an angel to say, "Yup, this is all approved by God," or, "Watch out, bummers on the loose, don't take this booking." Whichever you think God would be more likely to say. Or let's face it, if God disapproves of gays, then He could have solved this whole problem when he created mankind by not inventing homosexuality. If He wanted to make some sins to tempt us, there were loads of other things He could have done. It's strange that He would even come up with this idea at all and then immediately say it's wrong, even though He thought it up. If He really disapproved he could have easily designed human beings so that it wasn't possible for two ones of the same sex to have carnal relations. It's entrapment at worst and suggests to me that God gets off on watching people have sex with people of the same sex and then get furiously angry about it afterwards.
But I do wish God would intervene a bit more. He knows what is definitively right and wrong and it'd be cooler if he let us know now rather than wait until we're dead. The other day that day's paper ended up in the recycling. My wife insisted that I had put it in there, whereas I was unsure and thought she might have. One of us was definitely right and one of us was definitely wrong, but we're going to have to wait until we're dead and in Heaven to find out which was which. It just seems time ineffiecient to wait, when we have access to an all-knowing, all-seeing deity who could just easily tell us. It would have saved us half an hour of accusations and antoher hour or so of viewing each other with suspicion. Even now, a couple of weeks later I think the issue still rankles subconsciously. Come on God. You know the answer. Just tell us. What if we forget about it in the next fifty years (unlikely, it's going to be the first thing I ask you about when I die)? Just tell us now.
Some might argue this newspaper thing isn't very important, especially as we got most of the paper back out of the bin and only a couple of pages had been used to go under the cat food dishes. What if a child has gone missing? God knows where it is. Couldn't He just say and save people all the trouble of looking for it? Or, you know, try and stop the child going missing? When those parents get to Heaven and God finally reveals the secret He's held for so long will the parents be relieved and thankful or a bit pissed off with God for not mentioning it sooner.
You're right, the newspaper was a better example.
If the guesthouse couple turn out to have been correct to act as they did and not as I would have thought the worst fucking Christians or all time, then I am not sure that I want to be in Heaven with them or God or Jesus (shame on Him especially for turning people away after what He went through, but then again I'd bear a grudge if I'd been crucified by humans). I'll take my chances elsewhere.
As if I had any choice in that matter.