Those Arlington Assembly of God commercials make me so angry! I first started seeing them a few months ago, and it seems like they're on with increasing frequency.
If you've seen them you know what I'm talking about. One is with a man speaking, one with a woman, but they follow the same formula: I was young and vulnerable, then I was abused, then I was led astray and started living a sinful life as a homosexual, but then I found the true meaning of love in our Lord, Jesus Christ. Now I'm happy and married and have children and live my life with the Lord.
Oh, man, these commercials make me angry! I won't even get into the whole biology argument, cuz logic and science don't ever seem to work against a die-hard religious argument. At least, I have not figured out how. But what really surprises me is that these commercials are showing so frequently in the DC market. Hi, 91% blue? Maryland and even NoVA are pretty moderate, as far as I can tell, so this campaign seems to be fairly out of sync with the culture of this region. I don't even see commercials like this in southern Indiana. When even a major American corporation like Ford Motor Co defies the religious right and sticks with advertising to the GLBT audience (go HRC!), it really feels jarring and makes me angry to see this message in our nation's capital.
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Gargh...knowing that you know me, Stef, I hope you already know this - but that SO DOES NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF A LOT OF CHRISTIANS. Things like that piss me off more than I can articulate. You don't choose to be gay any more than you choose to be straight - you just *are*.
But NOVA is actually pretty conservative, DC and MD are the "blue" territories.
Oh, of course, I don't mean to paint with a broad brush... this clearly represents the view of this one particular congregation that is spending a lot of money for an ad campaign. The worry is that it does reflect a larger constituency that we use the general term "religious right" to describe, but that group in no way represents all religious people in the US.
But they keep getting more and more powerful. I was talking with Mom about this over Christmas. The topic of banning books in school libraries came up - because I'm reading Simon Winchester's new book which talks about ancient geology. It presents as scientific fact the whole concept of continental drift, based upon the earth being millions and millions of years old. I suggested that it might be hard for this kind of book to make it into public schools these days, cuz it presents facts so in conflict with creationism.
And I was railing on how much times have changed, cuz when I was in elem/middle school, just 15-20 years ago, books were banned for a very different kind of content - violence, sex. You know, Forever by Judy Blume and the like. There was never the question of books about SCIENCE being controversial. Ack!
The thing that's frustrating about the whole creation thing is that, as a Christian and as a scientist, I think that evolution and Big Bang theories and that sort of thing can *explain* how God created the Earth. This is not the same as Intelligent Design - to me, that seems to argue that whatever we can't explain now just can't be explained except as a miracle. I don't believe that God works that way, I think we just haven't figured out how he did it yet - although, saying that it's miraculous doesn't preclude a scientific explanation in my opinion.
This is also not the same as my friend who would write "THE HAND OF GOD" on his chemistry exams when he didn't know part of the equation so he could still get partial credit.
The thing that most creationists (not all, mind you) will really get their knickers in a twist over is the creation/origin of humans. Most don't care nearly as much about the concept of geologic time and all that. I could go on and on, ad nauseum about this stuff, but I won't. Unless you want to hear it.
I'm done now.
Lucky for me and my lack of cable tv or residence on the other side of DC or just my obsession with working 70 hour weeks I have yet to see this commercial.
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