There’s another horrible thing about “Pastor Sean” and his terrible raging sermon. It’s obvious enough but I want to spell it out.
It’s that he’s telling parents to hate what their children are. He’s not telling them to discipline a certain kind of bad behavior, he’s telling them to bully their children if the children are becoming a certain kind of person.
There are some kinds of broad category one would want to try to discourage children from being – mean, or domineering, or self-centered. But other than that, it’s a nasty business rejecting what a child is. Surely a good parent doesn’t do that. Surely a good parent welcomes whatever kind of person emerges as a child grows up.
Oh well, I suppose it’s otiose to belabor the point. Obviously the man has a painfully narrow impoverished idea of human possibilities and a panicky need to impose conformity everywhere. Obviously he wants girls to look like Barbie dolls and boys to look like extras in a Discover channel show about guns or motorcycles or gold mining or lumberjacking or crab fishing or dirty jobs. But still. It’s depressing that he really does want to squash all the ones who don’t fit.