Mega church cancels gay war vet funeral




Cecil Howard Sinclair was a Navy veteran who died this week at 46 from an infection after having surgery. His brother, a janitor and member at High Point Church, arranged for a funeral service to be held there. After reading the man's obituary, church officials discovered something crucial. Something that prompted the immediate cancellation of Sinclair's service just 24 hours prior to the event. Cecil Sinclair was gay.

It turns out that High Point was not willing to run the risk of giving people the impression that their church endorsed homosexuality. I'm not sure how it works, but apparently using your church building to host a funeral service for a member's love one who was gay means that you also accept/condone being gay. Whatever your stance is (here's mine), a church that doesn't want to serve and love others in your community just because you don't approve of the type of choices they make or how they live should close its doors and hit the road.

In the defense of Gary Simmons, the church's pastor, he did have the following to say, "We did decline to host the service — not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle. Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it — yes, we would have declined then. It’s not that we didn’t love the family.”

Well, then who didn't you love?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This man had died in the name of freedom for his country. That means religious freedom as well. For this pastor to turn his back in the hour of need for one of his flock is without morals. Funerals are not for the dead, but for the living. What kind of love did this show for the brother? Does it make the brother less of a human being and member of the congregation because his next of kin was gay? Is it now guilt by association? Will membership at Highpoint church be based upon your living relatives as well as your dead relatives? churches like Highoint are dangerous. theyspread a very subversive form of sepratism that has nothing to do with the greatist commandment, " Love your neighbor as yourself."

Meme

Chase Roper said...

Exactly.

There is no good reason why this Pastor Simmons couldn't have allowed this man's surviving family remember and rejoice over him. Just because he was gay doesn't mean he wasn't still one of God's favorite sons.