Muehlenberg, Wallace and Q&A – Christians bitch fight!

Q&A is a program that I look forward to every Monday night.  They manage to select panels that are interesting and thought provoking.  I have to wet my fur down I get so excited some nights!  I laugh, spit and hurl abuse at some of their guests!

Last weeks episode, A Philosophical Q and A, was particularly good, they had a progressive catholic, a conservative agnostic, a philosopher, a radical atheist and a radical christian.  The audience was made up of  ALP 35%, COALITION 45%, GREENS 14%¹, so overall a good cross section of our society, both in the audience and on the panel.

My old mate, the rabid gay-hating christian Jim Wallace², Wally to his mates, from the ACL³ was there representing the radical christian part of the world.  Wally was trying really hard to show christ’s love for everyone:

in the gospels homosexuality is seen as a sin. Now, let me say, though, that all people are loved by God. Nobody is less of a man or worse for any particular sin than anyone else

Woo hoo.  The transcript and video are on line if you’d like to have a look.

The bit I really love, however, is what happened after the show, in the blogs.  Roll in Bill Muehlenberg, Billy to his mates, in his blog on the show he starts by saying this:

So what do you call a situation involving one Christian pitted against a Jew who is really an agnostic, an apostate Catholic, a lesbian atheist, a mildly conservative agnostic, and a secular lefty host? Yep, you got it: a typical “fair” ABC debate. This happens so often that we really need to get the acronym right: Always Biased Crap.

Ha!  Biased.  So, let’s see:

1 christian
1 atheist
1 philosopher
1 agnostic
1 catholic

That to me, seems pretty balanced.

The ABC monotonously and routinely seems to stack the deck each time it has a “debate”. It is so afraid of real debate that it will ensure that there is a predetermined outcome. The Monday night Q&A television program is a typical – and appalling – example of this.

Stacks the deck?  You’d prefer to have them all christian perhaps.  That would give a ‘real debate’.  I think the efforts that Q&A go to ensure that they have a broad spectrum of views is sufficient to ensure that no one view dominates.  The likes of Billy really hate that his views aren’t represented to his satisfaction.  He thinks that because there is only ‘one christian voice’ that it’s biased towards non-christians.  The same could be said for the ‘one true atheist’ on the panel.

But the thing that really makes Billy cross is that Wally, head of the ACL, radical christian and gay-hating homophobe didn’t stick to the party line.  Billy is so distressed, he won’t even mention Wally by name. He refers to him as ‘the  one christian voice’.  How funny is that.  It seems there’s no love lost there.

unfortunately the one Christian voice let the cause down here. There were a number of small mistakes along the way – not sure why. Getting the 66 books of the Bible wrong was odd (he said 64). When offering a New Testament text on homosexuality, he said Romans 13 instead of Romans 1; another fairly substantial blunder. Romans 13 of course is the key text on God and government, while Romans 1 is one of the most important texts on homosexuality.

But we might put these mistakes down to pressure or the heat of the moment. We all can make minor errors in hot debates. But there was a much more important blunder which really was most unfortunate. In typical fashion Q&A offered set-up jobs instead of genuine questioners.

But you can’t help yourself can you, even though these are ‘small mistakes’ you have to correct him, after all, he’s the head of the ACL, he should know how to trot out the hate properly. The rest of the world gets the drift of what Wallace was saying, you know, that christians hate same-sex attracted people, because the bible says so.  We don’t care if it’s 66 or 64 books, getting the bible quote reference wrong.  Yeah, really bad Jim.

But what was the important blunder?

So, a video question came in, from Josh Thomas, a comedian (not that I find him particularly funny, but that’s not the point).  He addressed his question directly to Wally about being gay, and how the christians use some parts of the bible and ignore others.  Jim’s response has got fellow radical christian Billy really really upset:

A major part of this homosexual’s remarks was that he was born this way, always felt this way, and could not possibly change. Most unfortunately the Christian started by saying he agreed with him! This was disastrous. A major strategy of the homosexual lobby is to convince us that homosexuality is genetic, immutable, and unalterable.

You know when Billy really doesn’t like you, he point blank refuses to use names.  Rather than saying “A major part of Josh Thomas’ remarks, or Josh Thomas,  a known TV personality and homosexual activist, he avoids using his name at all, like it’s some sort of sin to do so. Much the same way he won’t mention Wally’s name.  But, back to the quote, how dare a christian depart from the holy teachings of hatred as spewed out by the likes of Billy.  How dare he agree with a homosexual’s remarks!

He then goes on to plug his book (again) and has this to say:

In almost 20 pages utilising 76 footnotes I offer a careful rebuttal to the claim that homosexuals are born that way and cannot change. Any Christian speaking or writing on this topic should know all this. And they should know that above all Jesus is in the business of radically transforming lives.

That’s right Billy, it’s just so wrong of Wally to get this wrong, especially after you’ve gone to all this trouble to write a book about the gays.  He really should have read it.

If we don’t believe this then we don’t believe the gospel. So it was a great disappointment that the only Christian on the show could not strongly offer the biblical and scientific position on this.

And, as Billy often says “and there we have it folks”  He’s saying that Wally doesn’t believe in the gospel, that he’s disappointed in Wally for not staying true to the radical christian agenda.  In true christian spirit Billy has publicly rebuked Wally, that’s the christian way to do it.  It says so in the bible, and then in his very next blog, Billy goes to great lengths to explain his justification for pointing out the errors of Wally’s ways, he does it because he loves Wally, really, and even Wally should get a second chance to fix his heretical views.

There are in fact times when we are commanded in Scripture to take a stand, even publically, and if necessary to offer public rebuke to Christian brothers – even leaders – who are going astray.

I just love it when the christians come out and play.  I just love it that Billy can’t help but be outraged that someone who he thinks should know better, has ignored the likes of Billy.

But not to be out done, we now have a little Billy also having a go at this.  Cameron Spinks, he’s the sole author of a blog called “Resistance Thinking” goes to great lengths to explain homosexuality on his blog.  Spinks at least uses people’s names:

Suffice to say that Jim Wallace’s response was less than adequate. So let me explore Josh Thomas’ comments.

We are then subjected to him pulling apart Thomas’ comments, all from some strange biblical position.

In the end Leviticus must be read through salvation and understood that it’s chief purpose was to keep the Israelite nation holy.

Umm…..ok…maybe that’s for another day.

Wally and Billy may never see eye to eye again.  Perhaps Billy is finally getting the idea that he’s unimportant, he’s views are out of touch with reality, and even the mighty ACL understands that they can’t continue to demonise and belittle people who are attracted to the same sex.  Well, at least a little bit.

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