{"id":1618,"date":"2004-12-04T10:37:38","date_gmt":"2004-12-04T14:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/12\/04\/look-closely\/"},"modified":"2004-12-04T10:37:38","modified_gmt":"2004-12-04T14:37:38","slug":"look-closely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/12\/04\/look-closely\/","title":{"rendered":"Look closely"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I had Google Ads on the sidebar, and I’ve got almost no control over
\nwhat shows up there.  I noticed one easrlier today, with a link to this<\/a>.  It’s a website sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s a profile of a college student on a website dedicated to a very
\nevangelical version of Christianity — one that, for instance, thinks
\nthat Catholics can be Christians, as long as they enjoy a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior<\/a>. 
\nIt presents a view of various religions, but in the end they all prove
\ninadequate because they don’t provide a personal relationship with God,
\nas this Christianity says it does.  (I might note that this is a
\nentirely tautological “critique”, wherein the failing of the religions
\nthat one presents is that they do not match the definition of the
\nreligion they’re pushing.  I hope that the college students for
\nwhom this is aimed have enough sense to use their brains in evaluating
\nthis, but my own experience with college students leaves me unsure
\nwhether that will happen.)<\/p>\n

But they chose an HIV positive person who’s a hemophiliac as their
\nspokesperson.  Why a hemophiliac?  Well, they’re almost the
\nonly “innocent” victims of the plague, because they got the disease in
\nan entirely passive way — i.e., they did not have sex or shoot
\ndrugs.  And there’s a small fop to not blaming the obvious
\nculprits.<\/p>\n

…So initially I decided to
\nblame the entire homosexual community. Easy cop-out. But after I thought about
\nit, I realized it’s kind of stupid to blame an entire group of people for my
\nproblem. I then decided to blame God….\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(What about the blood bankers who spent the better part of two years in
\nthe early ’80s trying to prevent any controls being placed upon blood
\ndistribution, even in reaction to AIDS, because they knew it would cut
\ninto their profit margins?)<\/p>\n

More to the point, the choice of a hemophiliac presents
\ndifficulty.  Considering what some conservative Christians have
\nsaid in the past regarding HIV, about “innocent” versus “non-innocent”
\nvictims of the scourge, we should be suspicious.  I don’t expect
\nthat they would have chosen someone gay, or who had pre-marital sex, or
\nsome other such way — although these are FAR more common than the
\nhemophilia\/blood products transmission route (millions versus a few
\nthousand).  This is calculated to play to the emotions and to a
\nblame game, to make the version of Christianity that’s being peddled
\nmore attractive, more pathos<\/span>-laden.<\/p>\n

But it seems fundamentally dishonest.  And I wish I could say that
\nI’m surprised.  But with this group, I’m not.  They’re not
\nJerry Falwell, but they’re not Desmond Tutu, either.<\/p>\n

I wish Steve Sawyer rest in death.  And I feel sorry that he and his story have become used in this way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had Google Ads on the sidebar, and I’ve got almost no control over what shows up there.  I noticed one easrlier today, with a link to this.  It’s a website sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ. It’s a profile of a college student on a website dedicated to a very evangelical version of Christianity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-q6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}