Church cancels gay man's funeral

[afleitch]

But at least he didn't force them to bake a cake.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2719893/Christian-church-cancels-blasphemous-gay-funeral-day-says-widower.html

'A widower in Florida says his church canceled his husband's funeral a day beforehand because parishioners found out he was gay and complained about the planned service.
Kendall Capers, of Tampa, says his partner of 17 years, Julion Evans-Capers, died late last month after a four-year battle against Amyloidosis, a rare illness that attacks the organs in the body. The couple was married last year in Maryland.

Mourners were already at Evans-Capers' wake when leaders at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa started receiving calls from parishioners, who were angered when a local newspaper ran an obituary listing Capers and Evans as married.

The man's mother, Julie Atwood, was told that holding the funeral at the Christian church would be 'blasphemous' — and the family was sent packing, she says.'

[afleitch]

Yeah, there's absolutely no imaginable excuse for this.

I know it was a 'thing' back in the dark days; I know of two men who were not able to bury their partners (one died of HIV complications) back in the 1980's in accordance with their religious rite because priests and minsters refused to. But I didn't think it still happened, even as one offs. I didn't think any church would refuse to bury the dead to be honest with you

[afleitch]

But at least he didn't force them to bake a cake.

This is the same thing

This man wasn't demanding baked goods from some stranger.  He was a member of the church community. He died.  They promised him and his family this one simple decent thing, and they rescinded.  This isn't just bigotry, it is betrayal.

Thankfully we can at least expect that another church that won't either consign him to Hell or be too cowardly to stand up for the most rudimentary tenets of the Gospel will step in here.

There are LGBT Christians who are betrayed on a daily basis, in life. There are people who do wonderful things for their church community; for fundraising, for kids, for music and education and they are betrayed when they enter into something joyful with another person. This is nothing new. Nor is the smugness in which people do this on the basis of 2014's big buzzword 'my sincerely held religious beliefs.' It gives you the right to be an asshole, with legal protection.

[afleitch]

Hi jmfcst...or is GaussLaw jmfcst? It's hard to tell these days.