It seems Godly love is practised in a very selective manner, by a select number of Christians. Invoke God’s name, and the divine power seems to go straight to their head.
Picture the scene: There is a terrible disease killing millions of people around the world. A few good people try to raise awareness and promote healthier ways of living. Then enter the Christians. They don’t want awareness to be raised. They don’t want to heal or help certain members of the human race, their fellow man. Doesn’t sound too Christian, does it?
Well, in Queensland, this is what happened.
A recent advertising campaign, showing an image of two men cuddling each other, holding a closed condom packet, promoting the importance of safe sex and awareness of HIV, was axed because a few well meaning people associated with the Australian Christian Lobby complained.
The director of Queensland’s chapter of ACL, Wendy Francis, was noted as admitting she and the ACL were responsible for approximately 30 complaints to the company running the ad campaign, on behalf of the Queensland Association For Healthy Communities.
Apparently it wasn’t so much an anti-gay move, as a move against the general sexual nature of the ad, according to comments by Francis. Two men cuddling is, of course, very sexual. There are few things more sexual. More sexual than an episode of “Satisfaction”, aired at lunch time on Australian television? I suppose the answer depends on your agenda…
“Satisfaction” follows the lives of women working as escorts and prostitutes, showing graphic scenes of a sexual nature…well, graphic scenes of sex, really.
The difference, for someone cynical, may point at the fact most sex on this show is of the heterosexual fashion, not homosexual, such as the wild and explicit scene of two men cuddling.
Considering the lives this ad campaign hopes to improve and potentially save, couldn’t the ACL simply pray for our sinful souls, and allow us the right to hold each other, in public or not? Whether we are male, female, or both or neither? Are issues of gender, sexuality and displays of affection so threatening, that it is preferable for people to continue to be ignorant of health issues and possibly suffer and die as a result?
Have the ACL ever watched a game of footie? Goodness only knows what Christ would think of grown men jumping on each other, kissing, cuddling, crying, all over the convenient excuse of a leather ball’s fateful trajectory. It’s clearly Sodom and Gomorrha all over again. Our culture allows people in the western world to exhibit many wild behaviours on a field of grass, with thousands of
The ad campaign was re-instated following one of the campaign’s models creating a Facebook page, in response to the complaints, and the resulting discontinuation of posters placed on bus shelters. Michael O’Brien’s page currently has the support of approximately 41,000 people, a tad more than the 30 poorly orchestrated ACL complaints.
Christians peddling their hate and propaganda is getting a little tired now.
In Adelaide, on 14th of May this year, a gay woman was pulled from a wheelchair, by people claiming to be Christian. She, and other members of the GLBT community, had attended a rally for equal rights, and to demonstrate for the opportunity for same sex marriage. Police had to intervene when a local Christian group became aggressive and violent.
God, all too often now, seems to be a convenient excuse for people to drive home their own agendas. Deeply sad.
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