Members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, will picket the funeral of Australian actor Heath Ledger, who, among his many roles -- including the role of "The Joker" in a new Batman film to be released posthumously -- acted the part of a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. In a press release, the Kansas church has attributed Ledger's death to "the wrath of God," wrath apparently incurred solely because of his cowboy role.
“Heath Ledger is now in Hell, and has begun serving his eternal sentence there,” the Westboro Baptist announcement says.--Fox News
No slippery distinctions between character and actor muddy the fine clarity of Westboro Baptist's theology, it would appear. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," etc. etc.
Readers may recall that Anthony Hopkins, even more shockingly, played Hannibal Lector, a murderer and eater of human flesh, in The Silence of the Lambs. Actor Hopkins thus, like Ledger, flagrantly disregarded yet another injunction found in the Book of Leviticus:
Do not eat meat with the blood still in it. Do not clip your hair at the temples, nor trim the edges of your beard. Do not ... tattoo yourselves.--Leviticus 19:26-28 (emphasis added).
Be afraid, Mr. Hopkins. Be very afraid.
2 comments:
Can't really get on them for hating gays. I mean, if you believe the Bible, you pretty much have to consider homosexuality to be a sin. It may be hypocritical, since they're clearly disregarding a few hundred Levitinumteronomy laws that people break on a daily basis, but upholding part of a legal code you believe in is better than upholding none of it.
But the way the Westboro Baptist Church manifests this hatred gets more ridiculous year by year. Soon they'll be picketing the funerals of everyone who's ever had a single thought in support of homosexuality. Oh wait -- they don't have enough members to do that. I'll thank God for that.
Some excellent points, and you're very fair minded.
But I think you could find better reasons to question the morality of sex outside marriage in general than relying on Leviticus. My understanding is that Leviticus was a code of ritual purity intended as a way to distinguish the ancient Israelites from neighboring pagan peoples. It wasn't intended as a moral code in the sense we think of a moral code.
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