The deacon is gone

For the second time in a year, the Vinton, Iowa, public library begins a search for a library director because the most recent person to hold that office has resigned, under pressure, under great pressure, we might add, because of the books the library chose to purchase and set out on the shelves. Second time. Less than a year.

The source of the furor is matters pertaining to the LBGTQ+ world. Books were purchased, displayed, the set out for borrowing that didn't meet someone's expectations, offended sensibilities. A fuss was raised, and things got hot for the librarian. Thus, the new one who'd replaced the previous one who'd left, left herself. 

Apparently, someone on the conservative side suggested a MAGA book, some children's book describing and defining the MAGA world. When the library decided that book didn't reach the library's standards for the children's literature, a match was struck. 

The story made the front page of this morning's Des Moines Register, yet another iteration of the culture wars raging all around. That a librarian would purchase books that don't make some arch-conservative's approved list is one thing, but that the library's refusal to put a MAGA book on the shelf would end up in a pitched battle is totally understandable.

I didn't need to read that story this morning. Yesterday offered more sorrows and woes than I need to suffer, although I wasn't surprised at the outcomes. In fact, if anything, the sheer number of the progressives was shocking. Almost a third voted consistently against rulings that would put homosexual sex in the same fire as porn and what not other abhorrent abominations. 

Yesterday, the conservatives won big. The church is still anti-gay. Many of those who voted in the majority would hate that word, "anti-gay," some would reject it outright. But in effect that's where people in my denomination come down--they'd just as soon get that LGBTQ+ stuff out of circulation. I don't own a crystal ball, but it doesn't take a seer to guess that that's not about to happen.

At the heart of the church story was a somewhat progressive congregation close to the inner city of Grand Rapids, MI, a church where a woman serving as a deacon had been voted into the consistory while being married to another woman--making that, you know, "same-sex marriage." 

Can we allow that? asked the denomination. Synod's answer was definitive: no. Anyone who held out hope that something other would be said was dreaming. To most people, gay sex is abominable, thus evil. Bible verses condemning homosexual acts abound, they say; and they might be right, depending what you make of the Bible itself. 

Thus, denominationally we dodged a bullet, or so the majority will say to their friends and their churches. We stand with the ages, centuries of doctrinal disapproval and outright hostility of such licentiousness. We sided with truth. We sided with the Lord God Almighty because we know very well what He thinks about those sinners. 

This morning, once the smoke clears, we can all rest safely because the truth is now written plainly and neatly for all us to see in our confessions. Rest easy, folks, the deacon is damned.