XPost: alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: alt.activism.children.molesters   
   From: nowomr@protonmail.com   
      
   >Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis on Disney v. DeSantis drama: Disney 'has a   
   >Disney problem'   
      
   Gays need to stay away from children, they're the property of church.   
      
      
   Southern Baptist's like having sex with children.   They mistakenly view   
   trans people as competition for their source.   
      
   Southern Baptist's like having sex with children.   They mistakenly view   
   trans people as competition for their source.   
      
      
      
   A report named hundreds of church leaders accused or found guilty of   
   abusing children and says survivors were mistreated Edward Helmore   
      
      
   America’s largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination is   
   being roiled by a sexual abuse scandal that casts a harsh light on one of   
   the most politically powerful religious groups in the country as well as   
   renewing a focus on its racist past.   
      
   The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a collection of loosely   
   affiliated member churches, boasting just under 15 million members, and is   
   dominated by white members, who are usually deeply socially conservative.   
   The convention has often been a powerful tool for rightwing organizing in   
   recent years, especially on issues around abortion.   
      
   But the SBC is now so mired in scandal that one recent former top official   
   said it faced a “Southern Baptist apocalypse”. FILE - The headquarters of   
   the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tenn., is seen on Dec. 7,   
   2011. On Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022, the Southern Baptist Convention’s   
   Executive Committee has offered a public apology and a confidential   
   monetary settlement to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell, who was   
   mischaracterized by the denomination’s in-house news service when she   
   decided to go public with her story in March 2019. (AP Photo/Mark   
   Humphrey, File) Southern Baptist leaders ‘stonewalled’ sex abuse victims,   
   scathing report says Read more   
      
   The issue at hand is the release by the SBC of a 205-page document naming   
   hundreds of Baptist leaders and members accused or found guilty of sexual   
   abuse of children. The list, which includes 700 entries on cases between   
   2000 and 2019, was released after a bombshell third-party investigation by   
   Guidepost Solutions said the convention’s leaders in its executive   
   committee failed the public and its community by mishandling sexual abuse   
   cases and mistreating victims and survivors.   
      
   SBC leaders Rolland Slade and Willie McLaurin issued a statement saying   
   the list “reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by   
   sexual abuse. Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find   
   hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to   
   protect and care for the most vulnerable among us.”   
      
   The initial report was released after a seven-month investigation that   
   revealed 380 leaders and volunteers in the SBC have faced public   
   accusations of sexual abuse. It said that the SBC’s general counsel and   
   spokesman had kept their own private list of abusive ministers and that   
   leaders of SBC’s executive committee had focused for decades on trying to   
   protect the SBC from liability for abuse in local churches.   
      
   “In service of this goal, survivors and others who reported abuse were   
   ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could   
   take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy – even if it   
   meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or   
   warning to their current church or congregation,” investigators wrote.   
      
   Among those named was Johnny Hunt, a Georgia-based pastor and former SBC   
   president, who has been accused of sexually assaulting another pastor’s   
   wife during a beach vacation in 2010.   
      
   Hunt, who resigned last month as senior vice-president of evangelism and   
   leadership at SBC’s domestic missions agency, has denied he assaulted the   
   woman but admitted on social media to a “personal sin” and called it “a   
   brief, but improper encounter”.   
      
   Others named were a former SBC vice-president who was credibly accused of   
   sexually abusing a 14-year-old; a former president who delayed reporting   
   child sexual abuse allegations out of “heartfelt concern” for the accused;   
   and another who failed to report allegations of abuse against young boys.   
      
   But the publication of the report and the subsequent list of names has led   
   to pushback within the organization – despite the horrific details   
   contained within it. “I am terrified that we are breaching our   
   longstanding position of being a voluntary association of independent   
   churches, when we start telling churches that they should do this or do   
   that to protect children or women,” said Joe Knott, a North Carolina   
   attorney and longtime committee member.   
      
   But some say that the report about decades of sexual abuse cover-up, is an   
   opportunity for the SBC to look more closely at its roots in white   
   evangelicalism, including how it was founded in 1845 to protect the   
   institution of slavery.   
      
   A study of that inception, White Evangelical Racism, published last year,   
   studied the roots of the SBC in the south. According to author Anthea   
   Butler, the SBC used scripture to deny the vote to emancipated Blacks   
   during Reconstruction and to later side with racist segregationists. In   
   more recent times the SBC has also taken flak for debating critical race   
   theory, an academic discipline that studies institutional racism in US   
   laws and society.   
      
   “The two biggest crises in the SBC are sex abuse and debates over critical   
   race theory, and the two are very much related,” said Sara Moslener,   
   director of the After Purity Project at Central Michigan University. “So   
   much of white racial identity is about obscuring the reality of the racist   
   history of United States and to obscure the issue of sexual assault in   
   evangelical churches.”   
      
   For both to be revealed, Moslener says, would be to undermine the status   
   quo in the SBC, theologically and nationally, for white evangelicalism.   
   “Since the report came out, people have been talking about it as an   
   ‘apocalypse’, but an apocalypse can mean both destruction and reveal.”   
      
   An article in the New Republic published this month went further,   
   suggesting that the SBC crusade against “critical race theory”, while   
   obscuring sexual abuse within its own ranks, “is further suggestive that   
   racial terror is still very much at work within the organization”.   
      
   In 2019, the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Birmingham, Alabama,   
   moved to resolve that “critical race theory and intersectionality should   
   only be employed as analytical tools subordinate to Scripture – not as   
   transcendent ideological frameworks”. The convention further resolved that   
   “the gospel of Jesus Christ alone grants the power to change people and   
      
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