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Guest Post From Renee of Womanist Musings

Next week there will be a vote on Amendment 1, which would add a ban on gay marriage to North Carolina's constitution.  Filled with false righteousness and determined to influence the decision, Pastor Sean Harris of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, took to his pulpit to advocate strict adherence to the gender binary, and compulsory heterosexuality for all children.  For this bigot, conformity begins in the home and to ensure that children are properly abused, Harris even go as far as to suggest that fathers should punch their sons.
So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, "Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do." You get out the camera, and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female, and then you upload it to YouTube, and everybody laughs about it, and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid, is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed. Shaming a four year old child for expression is disgusting.  It had me thinking about an incident I had about a month ago in which a parent decided to inform me that I was going to make my youngest son Mayhem gay, by allowing him to wear nail polish and encouraging his love of dancing. As you might well imagine, the conversation did not go well for the bigot.  What Pastor Harris is advocating is so incredibly emotionally harmful for children.  Kids should be free to explore who they are in a safe environment without constantly being policed, and if they do happen to be GLBT kids, no amount of forced conformity is going to change that.  All you are teaching your child is that hate is acceptable, and that you don't believe in unconditional love.
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? "You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male."  So, if ordering a change in behaviour does not work, it's okay to be violent with a child.  I hope to heaven that this man does not have any children. As a pastor, he is supposed to minister to his flock and tend to the weak and defenseless, and instead he is using his power to do the exact opposite.  What ever happened to love one another as I have loved you? No, it's only more violence in the name of God and parental rights.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? "You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male." Once again, Harris is preaching the gender binary as though it is not a pure construction of society.  There is no specific way to be a man.  Gay men don't stop being male when they become aware of their sexuality. The very fact that he could advocate punching a child tells me that he has no conscience, and no respect for anyone who isn't exactly like him.  This kind of attitude, is what is behind the suicides of gay teens across North America.  Harris isn't preaching the gospel, he is using hate speech to promote genocide as far as I am concerned.

And when your daughter starts acting too butch you reign her in. And you say, "Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up." I guess it's nice to see that he is an equal opportunity bigot. Girls can play sports everyone, they just have to remember to make themselves pretty on a regular basis.  Really?  All women are good for are their appearance and their ability to please men?   If it weren't so disgustingly sad, I would laugh.
You say, "Can I take charge like that as a parent?"
Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that. Right, his hatred makes him so powerful that he can give a dispensation over ruling the law of the land. This is beyond arrogance.  Children aren't our possessions even though they are vulnerable and dependent on us to take care of them.  If anything, their vulnerability and innocence makes us responsible for caring for them and respecting them as little people.

From start to finish this man has advocated strict adherence to the gender binary, compulsory heterosexuality and child abuse. When I look at him, I don't see a man of God, but a hate filled angry bigot with too much power and less common sense then God gave cabbage.  Attitudes like this are exactly why I no longer belong to any form of organized religion.  I feel that it is a stain upon Christ's teachings to advocate hate instead of loving thy neighbor.  I don't believe any loving God would advocate harming another in this fashion.