Baptists, Big Oil and the Gays

Gays can have their narcissistic moments, but we all know not every world event is about the community. Seems the Southern Baptist Convention would disagree. Like past claims from evangelical organizations, members of the SBC couldn't resist pairing the gays with natural disasters, like BP's far reaching oil spill.

The Southern Baptist Convention has long been a sounding board for the leaders of the U.S.'s largest Baptist denomination, growing to over 16 million members in more than 42,000 churches since its inception in 1845.

At the SBC's 2010 convention in Orlando, leaders heavily criticized oil companies, namely Britsh Petroleum, for their negligence. To the church, BP's oil spill in the gulf is a reminder that "our God-given dominion over the creation is not unlimited, as though we were gods and not creatures."

The SBC called on its affiliates to pray for a speedy clean up and to assist communities, renewing a proclamation given in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. What followed was an irresistible pairing that has become typical for evangelical organizations: Natural disasters are God's answer to our ways of life, including homosexuality.

Rewind: Gays Blamed For Katrina

Along with calls for aide to oil spill victims, the Convention also passed resolutions in opposition of homosexuality. Statements opposed ENDA, the employment non-discrimination act that already allows churches to reject gay applicants. Anti-gay resolutions also condemned allowing gays in the military. They claim that repealing 'don't ask, don't tell' would "restrict" the ministry and allowing gays to openly serve is a threat to national security. "No government should implement standards or policies regulating the lives of military personnel based on nothing other than indulging sexual desires," the resolution reads.

The SBC's resolutions are non-binding, but its proclamations are heavily influential in its member communities. SBC's anti-gay statements alone are enough to alienate its LGBT and LGBT-friendly membership. And though the issues of national disaster and homosexuality were not directly resolved, implying that our social acceptance of gays is the cause of any schisms between God and man—and in turn national disasters—isn't interpreting the will of the divine, but using grief to further a political agenda.