To protect the children, let’s make churches adults-only venues

Authored by arktimes.com and submitted by MrTobyZiegler
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When Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R-Of Course) spoke up in committee on January 19 in defense of his bill, SB43, which would designate drag shows as “adult” venues, he quoted at length from an ostensible communique he received from a drag queen, begging him to protect Arkansas’s children and assuring him that “a lot of nudity, a lot of sex, a lot of things” goes down at drag shows.

Granted, Stubblefield could give no actual examples of any child being assaulted at a drag show, but let us give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is genuinely interested in protecting Arkansas’s children. On January 25, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders expressed total support for SB43, saying, “I think we have to do everything — I’ve been very clear and talked about this pretty extensively — to protect children. And I think that’s what this bill does, and so would be supportive of it in its current form. We’ll continue to take steps and do things that I believe protect the children of Arkansas.”

In that case, Sen. Stubblefield and Gov. Sanders will want to take the next logical step and put forward a bill designating the state’s many, many churches to be adults-only venues. We need to protect the children, after all, and we know that the church is a hub of child sexual abuse by clergy in Arkansas and the nation.

The Diocese of Little Rock maintains a website disclosing a list of all those Roman Catholic priests who have been credibly accused of abusing children. The list was made public in 2018, 16 years after the Boston Globe broke the story of a massive coverup of known pedophile priests in the United States. Then, in 2019, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News started reporting on sex abuse in Southern Baptist churches; a 2022 third-party report highlighted how the Southern Baptist Convention, like the Roman Catholic Church, had been hushing up cases of such abuse for years and years. The SBC eventually released its own list of accused sex offenders, which included many in Arkansas.

Churches make opportune places for pedophiles to set up shop. First, most Christian ideologies position priests and pastors in the role of God’s emissary upon this earth. It’s hard to argue with “God’s will,” or to speak up from the very bottom of this well-established hierarchy. And in a church culture that prizes “sexual purity” above all else, children who have been molested are even more reluctant to come forward. It’s no wonder churches have been at the center of child sexual abuse scandals.

And children in church are also exposed to materials that would easily qualify as obscene or harmful to minors. For example, take this passage, Ezekiel 23:19-21 (New Revised Standard Version):

Yet she increased her prostitutions, remembering the days of her youth, when she prostituted herself in the land of Egypt and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of stallions. Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when the Egyptians fondled your bosom and caressed your young breasts.

Is it appropriate for children to be encountering this bit of prurient writing that describes men whose penises are “like those of donkeys” and who, when they ejaculate, apparently shoot large wads of semen “like those of stallions.” Moreover, given how offensive racial stereotypes can be harmful to minors, we have to point out that the Bible represents a population group in Africa as having larger-than-average genitalia.

What if, in addition to this grotesque imagery, children were also exposed to biblical tales of incest? We’ve had cause already this legislative session to quote from one particular passage of Genesis 19 (King James Version, because if you’re talking incest, you should cite European royalty):

31 And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. 33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. 35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. 36 Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

Is it right to tell children such sick and twisted stories? And should children be exposed to tales of gang rape and dismemberment? Let’s consider Judges 19: 22-29 (NRSV):

While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house and started pounding on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may have intercourse with him.” And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them, but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and put her out to them. They wantonly raped her and abused her all through the night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light. In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was the woman, his concubine, lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. “Get up,” he said to her, “we are going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey, and the man set out for his home. When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel.

I will guarantee that no drag queen story hour has featured a tale as depraved as any of these. No children should be exposed to works of sadomasochistic pornography just because some prurient portion of the population deems them sacred scripture.

In short, if we want to protect children from exposure to sexual materials and from sexual assault, we should protect them from the ravages of a church culture that would exploit their bodies and ravish their souls.

Sen. Stubblefield and Gov. Sanders, if you take seriously the need to save the children of Arkansas from the horrors of abuse, you will demand a bill designating churches as adult-only zones. After all, compared to drag shows, churches in this state are absolute dens of iniquity.

thistimelineisweird on January 27th, 2023 at 20:47 UTC »

Drag performers could register a non-profit church the way John Oliver did. Now it is about religious freedom.

epistaxis64 on January 27th, 2023 at 20:20 UTC »

Man this would be the absolute best outside of taking away their tax exempt status.

The_Navy_Sox on January 27th, 2023 at 20:18 UTC »

Before anyone gets mad they are saying if we are banning kids from drag shows, they should be banned from church which is a place where kids have been sexually assaulted many times, unlike drag shows. It's more tongue in cheek than anything.

It also makes the point of some verses in the bible being adult content that is not suitable for children, so it should be kept from kids the same way books are being removed from schools that have gay or trans characters.

This is not an attack on religion, but showing how ridiculous these bans on other things are.