Every fundamentalist is a murderous monster waiting to be let out

[solarbird]

Group Behind Central Park Coronavirus Tent Hospital Asks Volunteers To Support Anti-Gay Agenda
By Jake Offenhartz
March 30, 2020

https://gothamist.com/news/samaritans-purse-franklin-graham-anti-gay-evangelical-central-park

On Tuesday morning, a makeshift tent hospital in Central Park will begin treating overflow patients from Mount Sinai, as the spread of COVID-19 begins to overwhelm local hospitals. Announcing the 68-bed respiratory unit this weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the relief organization, Samaritan's Purse, responsible for funding and erecting the facility.

The mayor did not mention that the group is led by Franklin Graham, a notorious anti-LGBTQ and Islamophobic preacher with a track record of using humanitarian missions to proselytize an evangelical agenda.

Graham, the son of prominent minister Billy Graham, has specifically sought to recruit Christian medical staff to the Central Park facility. According to the group's website, all volunteers, including health care workers, should read and adhere to a statement of faith, in which marriage is defined as "exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" and the unrighteous are sentenced to "everlasting punishment in hell."

This isn't charity.

It's not. They'll call it that, they'll say it's that, and others will defend them.

But it's not.

Arguably, it's charitable. They're doing a charitable work - for the select, for themselves - but it's not charity, not in the real sense of it. Not when you're attaching strings like this.

What is it, then?

It's a political statement. It's a power play. It's recruitment. It's all of the above.

It's a chance for them to rub in the face of every faggot, "we hate you, you're going to literal hell, and we think you deserve to die." It's a chance to make a statement like that and get applauded for what they're doing. It's a chance to make clear they have the power to do this, the dominance to heal some while spitting in the face of their favourite targets.

It's many things.

It's partially a chance to do some good - for their own. For the right kind of people, or for people who might become the right kind of people, it's charitable.

It's certainly seeing a crisis as an opportunity and using that crisis to make a political statement. To gather various kinds of PR benefits.

It's also a chance to remind those filthy faggots who's really in charge here - during a plague.

It's hateful, it's mean, it's spiteful, it's bigoted, and most of all, it's cruel.

It's many things.

But it's not charity.

Comments

[maellenkleth]

So if I end up in there and my wife wants to visit me, do we get bounced bv these evangelistic pudwallopers? That's not the New York I remember and love.

[solarbird]

In theory, for patients, they will have to obey non-discrimination codes.

But one of the requirements for working there is that they see you as deserving of hell. They have to hate you.

I think we all know how that'll play out in real life.

In theory

[dialecticdreamer]

I hope that neither you nor your wife are directly affected by this virus, and that the most diret interaction you have with evangelical nits like that is a thought exercise in creating devastating comebacks, to be used under the precious right to free speech... to leave THEM speechless, at least for a moment.

Re: In theory

[solarbird]

Under the new rules the administration formulated (and I talked about), they are able to do this and far more on every level, and receive taxpayer funds for doing it. All in the name of "religious liberty."

[dewline]

Oh, no, this isn't disturbing at all.

GYAH!

[dialecticdreamer]

I have a sudden urge to apologize on behalf of my species...

and then I wonder if hatred like that is genetic, not merely learned. If so, I could rightly claim that those people AREN'T the same species. Which is their argument turned back in their face, so I'm ONLY making it here to point that out.

Worse than the outright, open bigotry, the implied hatred and risk of discrimination -- does it matter if they actually discriminate, when the RISK of it will keep sane people away?-- is that OTHER politicos will be LAUDING this behavior as oh-so-powerful during the pandemic.

I truly fear how this will be viewed next year, or in ten years. Because right now, too many people see the carrot, and not the stick.

Re: GYAH!

[solarbird]

Under the new rules the administration formulated (and I talked about), they are able to do this and far more on every level, and receive taxpayer funds for doing it. All in the name of "religious liberty."

In theory, in terms of the patients, they're required not to discriminate - but with literally everyone working there being required to hate queers? I think we know how it will go down.

Re: GYAH!

[dialecticdreamer]

Again, it's the WORRY over discrimination that I think will keep people away, if they have ANY choice at all.

Frankly, if they don't have a choice but are SENT from Sinai out to the tent hospital, I think that should be grounds for a lawsuit all on its own. I am so very grateful that I haven't been farther than the back porch in seventeen days and counting.

[maellenkleth]

Their idea of the afterlife is about as enticing to me as week-old Wonder 'Bread'.

Hell has jazz and booze.

I've told people like that to their face, and they flee.

Hell

[dialecticdreamer]

Don't forget all of the great thinkers who ended up on the wrong side of a particular branch of Christianity! If the party gets too loud, I'll just slide over to the salon and see if Galileo is giving lectures, or Edna Saint Vincent Millay has written any more "scandalous" poetry.

[stickmaker]

Apparently, these people haven't read the part where Jesus praised a man who sought a miracle for his sick, male companion.