The Cool Church Doesn't Like Us Either

It's been something of a slog, this getting back into the daily routine when I still desperately want to be someplace else and it's unbearably hot, to get hotter, and the AC in my truck decided to die in a very expensive way. But I was getting there, avoiding heat-induced nausea for most of the day, managing to just see the tough little desert trees without comparing them unfavorably to towering oaks and maples, breathing sighs of relief that excellent Mexican food is never more than a few blocks away, you know, feeling Tucson again and being mostly okay with it.

Because Tucson is mostly a cool place. A cool, cool place, so I had never batted an eye when I saw banners and bumper stickers for "The Cool Church" popping up here and there. Some of the banners had pictures of the pastor on them, a muscular, 40-ish dude with spiky bleached hair and an earring. Shrug, move on.

Tee hee. Yeah, whatever. The front page of this morning's Daily Star carried this headline:

'Cool Church' Teachings on Gays Decried as 'Uncool'

And as much as I despise religion-section fluff getting front-page play, even when it's below the fold, I just had to read.

Church member Rinehart said his feelings toward gays and lesbians are hurt and sadness.

"They don't realize the destructive lifestyle they are living," he said.

"Money, sex, drugs, stealing, killing, prostitution — you name it. We all have problems. We all sin. Jesus told us we can't be perfect. That's why we need him."

You know, since it's a Cool Church, I was hoping for a little more cutting-edge characterization of my depravities. Comparing me to a drug-addicted kleptomaniac murderous hooker is just so 1990.

A trip to the church's website gets you hip-deep in tired anti-gay and pro-Christian-Nation propaganda lifted directly from the Family Research Council and the Wallbuilders pseudohistory shills (exhaustively debunked, respectively, by Jim Burroway and Ed Brayton). It's the same old fake evangelical science and fake evangelical history in a slightly shinier package. And, Daily Star, it's still not news.