Are They Smoking Cilantro?

From the Houston Chronicle:

“The service at Moore Funeral Home turned out to be a celebration of Sinclair’s life, although the church’s cancellation lingered in some minds, Seelig said.”

Who’s Sinclair? Cecil Sinclair was a Gulf War navy veteran. His brother was a janitor at High Point Church, a mega-church in Arlington, Texas. Cecil died just before a scheduled heart surgery and the church offered to host his funeral because his brother worked there.

Wait, did that quote say the church cancelled Sinclair’s funeral? Yes it did– a very convenient 24 hours before it was to happen. Why? Turns out it was because Sinclair was gay, and a slide show that would have been a part of the service showed pictures of Cecil with his partner. The pastor said he wouldn’t dream of showing pictures of a murderer murdering in a slide presentation, so why would he show a gay person with his partner (and really, aren’t murdering and loving someone the same thing?).

No one but the church knows why they waited until a day before the funeral and when the relatives of the deceased would have to make hundreds of phone calls to friends and families to notify them that the service would have to happen somewhere else. Cecil’s sister who was making the arrangements suspects it was because some high-dollar members got word that the funeral of a gay person was going to be there so they raised holy hell.

Who’s that Seelig guy quoted at the first of the post? That’s Tim Seelig, director of the Turtle Creek Chorale, the world-reknowned, Dallas-based men’s chorus who sang at Cecil’s funeral.

He issued an embarrassing indictment of the church (and in my opinion all churches who act this way):

“That’s where they are misguided,” Seelig said. “They preach love, but they don’t act it out.”

High Point’s URL is churchunusual.com, but it doesn’t sound very.

P.S. The title of this post was a search engine term used to find my blog. It seemed appropriate.