Seagate Community Chapel

Recently Sea Gate Community Chapel here in Wilmington, NC published the sign above.  The gay community protested the sign and the attack on gay people.  From what the news reports, a protester later damaged the sign. 

This is one of those issues where both sides behaved badly and now both sides have to deal with the consequences.  Sea Gate Community Chapel takes no responsibility for their actions.  They claim only to 'love' gay people and to be concerned about them.  They were not attacking any group, they were simply expressing God's love in a dying world!

The Gay community on the other hand, has to deal with being stuck with responsibility for the person who damaged the sign.  And of course, everyone who opposes gay's will use the vandalism of the sign as a symbol of the lack of self control within the gay community.  The final justification will ultimately be that someone was expressing his ire at such an inflammatory message. 

Later a facebook exchange occurred between many church members and many members of the gay community, myself included.  There was the usual mix of  'judge not lest ye be judged' type comments, the banter back and forth of opposing minds, the uneducated on both sides claiming to know what God rightly intended for us and how He intends us to live our lives and all of the other rhetoric that both sides love so well. 

But sadly the chance of any real discourse was totally avoided and little if any real communication occurred.  So where are we now?  The church members are proudly proclaiming themselves martyr's for Christ, fighting the good fight and standing up against a sinful world and the gay community is claiming victory for standing unabashed in the face of their accuser's, hero's of the civil rights movement.  But at the end of the day, gays are still gay, bigots are still bigots, church people are still church people and nothing was gained by anyone.  Tomorrow the world will turn and nobody will really be any different.