Idk about that…

When you practice something, you’re actively changing your technique to elicit better results. You’re not making huge changes, but rather a series of miniscule ones that add up.

For instance, I could sit down with a flute and a piece of music, and play it decently. It wouldn’t be great, but it wouldn’t be terrible. If I play it the same way every time, it’s always going to sound decent - but it’s always going to have the same wrong notes, the same rushed passages, the same intonation issues… If I practice it, I can make changes over time that fix those things. I can fix my fingerings, even out the rushed bits, adjust my intonation… But then I wouldn’t be doing the same thing anymore, I’d be doing something slightly different.

Some (but not very much) of the bullshit they ramble on about is in there, but it’s not in the important part.

All of the fire and brimstone, Sodom & Gomorrah, “I am a vengeful god” shit is in the Old Testament. Sure, the Old Testament is important (it’s like half of the book, after all), but it’s important as backstory. It’s literally just the Torah in a different order, included because Christianity started as a breakaway sect of Judaism.

The part that actually pertains directly to Christianity starts with a list of “begats,” some very confused shepherds, and a barn baby getting presents. The New Testament is mostly about helping others and being tolerant; and the star of the show, Jesus, literally goes around telling people that they can get into heaven just by being nice and helping the needy. He gets angry exactly once, and goes on a table-flipping rampage because someone else was taking advantage of poor pilgrims. It’s the kind of thing that a lot of the Christian Right would call “hippie bullshit,” but it’s also the entire point of their religion.

Well, yeah - before you’re born, they want you have a life; after, they tell you to get a life and quit whining. Sounds pretty “pro-life” to me!

(/s, because tone doesn’t carry well in text)

Sorry if I was unclear - he moved to not hold a vote on whether we should become Open & Affirming for ten years, and the vote on that passed.

By tabling it for ten years, they avoided having to put “ALSO, STILL NOT OFFICIALLY COOL WITH GAY PEOPLE” in the annual report every year. No matter how nice and supportive folks actually were, having to reiterate that we weren’t Open & Affirming made us seem… Well, Closed & Disparaging, like the Catholics down the street.

I actually asked the guy about it a few years later, when I was old enough to actually pay attention to the annual meetings - he said he was pretty sure that the old lady didn’t have ten more years left, and he wanted to make sure that it passed the next time that it was voted on.

I mean… He’s not wrong. I grew up in a fairly relaxed Christian church, where the emphasis was on the part of the Bible where Jesus says “don’t be a douchebag,” and “wait for them to die” was something they actually did.

For context, it wasn’t about anything bad. When I was a kid, the church kept voting on if they wanted to be Open & Affirming (basically just taking an official positive stance on lgbtq folks). The church was already lower case open and affirming - the minister’s son was gay, as was the organist, and everyone was cool with it - but they needed a majority vote to become upper case Open & Affirming. Every year, one bigoted old lady who only came to church on Christmas and Easter would get all of her friends to vote against it, and every year it would get voted down.

The organist got tired of it, and he left. The next year, the minister went too. The year after that, when it got voted down, an old man near the front stood up and called out that he wanted to move to vote on tabling the issue for ten years. His wife quickly seconded, and the council held the vote… Overwhelming yes.

For the next decade, the lgbtq crowd in the congregation actually slowly grew: the church’s official stance was always quietly avoided, and the old lady was never there to make them feel unwelcome… Speaking of whom, her poorly-attended funeral was held about eight years later, and her friends stopped coming to the annual meetings.

When the issue of becoming Open & Affirming was raised again, it passed by a wide margin.