Monday, June 12, 2006

Lolly's Story - 5/11/06

I first stumbled upon Crosswalk back in 2004. I'm an American living in Great Britain, and I wanted a way to keep in touch with what was going on in the American Christian community. A few months later, CW announced that they were merging with Christianity.com, so I headed over to the other site to see what the people were like. Oh, my goodness. The very first thread I found, moderated by Fritz, was entitled "Why Aren't Women Submitting More?" (I wonder if the guy who started it is the one from Coheir's post? Because he also turned out to be young and single.) Naturally the topic turned to women in leadership, and people began calling them names like Whore of Babylon. One man made a sick joke comparing them to Balaam's donkey. And through all this, Fritz did nothing.

And I remember when Pope John Paul II passed away. There were people on Crosswalk saying that he was going to hell because he was a Catholic and other vicious things. As you can imagine, this terribly offended the Catholic members, and yet, once again, Fritz did NOTHING to stop it.

And let's see. Late last year some twit started a thread gloating about how homosexuals had just lost a Supreme Court case. I mean that literally. He was gloating and saying how wonderful it was that those "awful gays" had been put in their place. Several of us posted that you know? That might not be very loving and Christ-like, and it certainly wouldn't witness to any gay people. Guess what? Fritz contacted us all and said that we were banned from ever participating in disucssions about homosexuality again. I can still remember his e-mail. "Obviously you are not capable of having a discussion about homosexuality." Like rejoicing in another person's misery is having a discussion?

Let me conclude by saying that I, too, have been banned from Crosswalk. At least, I got banned for a month last year. At the time, there was a discussion going about the marriage of Prince Charles. For insisting that I thought he was committing adultery, I was "offending British peeople." (There are several British posters on Crosswalk.) At the end of the month, I had to write an essay about why I had done what I did, and how I would behave better in the future. Unfortunately, I wasn't as brave as Coheir. I sucked it up, wrote the essay, and got re-instated. Surprise, surprise. I then contacted the principal British woman with whom I had been debating, and she hadn't been offended in the least! (I wonder if Fritz had been keeping his eye on me, because I had made my egalitarian views clear in the "Women's Roles" thread.)

I wish I could write more paragraphs. I have a lot more stories to tell...

No comments: