Damned Christians

[Fake Messiah]

TN teacher seeks religious accommodation; LGBTQ books removed

After a teacher objected to using LGBTQ+ material, raising questions about religious accommodations and parental rights, a Tennessee charter school removed more than 20 books from its curriculum.

In February of this year, a first-grade teacher at KIPP Nashville charter school objected to teaching two books featuring same-sex marriage because it conflicted with his religious beliefs. Instead, Eric Rivera asked another teacher in the classroom to read the books.

According to Cliff Martin, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, the principal threatened Rivera with termination and did not discuss how he could have religious accommodation.

A demand letter from First Liberty attached the final warning Rivera received for choosing not to comply with the material. First Liberty argued Rivera was entitled to an accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and that allowing another teacher to read the books would not create an undue hardship for the school.

Title VII is a federal law under the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

“We believe there are more Eric Riveras that hold up their hand and say, ‘I would prefer not to teach this material’; we believe that schools are eventually going to have to respect them under Title VII,” Martin told The Center Square.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/tennesse...a2582.html


Why is someone a teacher in the first place if he doesn't want to teach?

[The Valkyrie]

TN teacher seeks religious accommodation; LGBTQ books removed

After a teacher objected to using LGBTQ+ material, raising questions about religious accommodations and parental rights, a Tennessee charter school removed more than 20 books from its curriculum.

In February of this year, a first-grade teacher at KIPP Nashville charter school objected to teaching two books featuring same-sex marriage because it conflicted with his religious beliefs. Instead, Eric Rivera asked another teacher in the classroom to read the books.

According to Cliff Martin, senior counsel with First Liberty Institute, the principal threatened Rivera with termination and did not discuss how he could have religious accommodation.

A demand letter from First Liberty attached the final warning Rivera received for choosing not to comply with the material. First Liberty argued Rivera was entitled to an accommodation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and that allowing another teacher to read the books would not create an undue hardship for the school.

Title VII is a federal law under the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

“We believe there are more Eric Riveras that hold up their hand and say, ‘I would prefer not to teach this material’; we believe that schools are eventually going to have to respect them under Title VII,” Martin told The Center Square.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/tennesse...a2582.html


Why is someone a teacher in the first place if he doesn't want to teach?

A conservative christian.

Probably because he wants to be close to little kids. The same reason creepy types want to become "youth pastors".

[Fake Messiah]

Not to mention that no matter how hard these conservative Christians try to ignore homosexuality, it doesn't ignore them.

It's actually kind of hilarious:

[Fake Messiah]

When a pastor preaches cruelty, why does the congregation listen?

Halfway through Netflix's jarring docuseries Death of the Pastor’s Wife, I found myself rewinding a clip to make sure I had heard it correctly. It was that unhinged.

There was John-Paul "JP" Miller, pastor of Solid Rock Church, telling his congregation that a wife who refuses her husband sex is inviting the devil into her marriage. He claimed that withholding intimacy was comparable to rape, sex trafficking, or homosexuality.

He said it as doctrine, as some sort of Bible-based fact, and as justification for his own abhorrent behavior. What stunned me was that members of his congregation sat in the pews and nodded along.

You might think Miller was an outlier. I don’t. I think this type of behavior — pastors exploiting Scripture to justify their predatory actions and manipulate their congregations — is more prevalent than we know.

I was raised deeply Catholic, which included eight years of Catholic school, Mass every Sunday and parents who gave their time and faith to the parish without reservation. My father was a saint and an extraordinarily good man. To a child, the priests who came to our house for dinner were something close to God's stand-ins on earth.

They were revered. You don't question a man you've been taught is incapable of being wrong. After my father died, one of those priests tried to groom me. He made attempts — I'll leave it there — that no child should ever have to describe, let alone survive. Yet on Sundays, he would preach about avoiding sin, following Jesus's word and the dangers of not doing so.

That experience taught me something I wish I hadn't had to learn so young: The vestments, the altar and, most especially, the title — none of it makes a person righteous. It just makes people less likely to ask questions about them.

For years, rumors followed this priest from parish to parish. Whenever they surfaced, he was shipped somewhere else, and the cycle began again.

Yet, on Sundays, people still came to hear him, listen to him and take communion from him. I often wonder why the congregations turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to what was happening.

Watching Miller’s congregation absorb his twisted theology without blinking, I also thought about a close friend from high school in Pittsburgh — someone smart and funny whom I admired — who went on to earn a divinity degree and start a church and youth ministry in Kansas.

Nothing wrong with any of that. But when the anti-LGBTQ+ funding scandal involving Chick-fil-A broke years ago, he didn't just ignore it or remain silent. He became fixated on defending a company funneling money into anti-LGBTQ+ causes.

Among his scores of Facebook followers were kids in the rock bands he sponsored, young people in the youth groups he oversaw and members of a congregation that hung on every word he said on Sundays and beyond.

I thought, too, of cousins of mine who were obsessively plugged into a network of extreme right-wing pastors; one cousin even married one. They would share sermon clips that were less about love and more about condemning people who didn’t think or believe as they did. One of those pastors was later arrested for attempting to solicit sex from a 13-year-old boy.

I share these stories because each happened within my own circle. They are data points, not the findings of an extensive study. And I’d venture to say there are no statistics capable of proving what my gut has told me for a long time.

I have long believed that the structures surrounding these zealot pastors, who stand before a captive, adoring audience every week, create ideal conditions for abuse.

The job itself gives them the room's adoration and attention. They can frame their conduct as God's will and try to prove it by manipulating the Bible or demonizing people whom congregants have already been taught to see as heathens, sex traffickers, rapists and queers.

This is the running theme that connects the white evangelical right to a twice-impeached, twice-divorced, criminally convicted, grifting, demonic president they've decided is God's imperfect vessel. They twist Bible verses into convoluted logic to justify treating him like the second coming.

In doing so, they become just as demonic and just as guilty of sin as he is — as do the pastors who praise him. In essence, Trump is the ultimate abusive pastor, surrounded by a MAGA congregation that thinks he can do no wrong.

The scandal was never just the man behind the pulpit. It's every person willing to sit in the pew and mistake his certainty for God's.

https://www.advocate.com/opinion/jp-mill...ocumentary

[The Grand Nudger]

It doesn't take much twisting. Its not as if a person is going to struggle to find abhorrent excuses for their abhorrent behaviors in magic book. It was written by and for people just like them.