I can’t remember exactly what week it was, but it was about a month ago. You could tell that the national corporate-front money had hit North Carolina, because the FOR signs started sprouting like mushrooms. Previously, I had seen a few here and there, but suddenly they were all around. Maybe the liberal island where I live (the cluster of four brick-red counties below) didn’t have as many signs in the yards as in other parts of the state, but they were in the highway medians, under the traffic signs, and in front of the churches.

Pittsboro Baptist Church stands on the street where I live, and I drive past it on a daily basis. Every time I passed that sign, it made me think. I thought about the nationally-funded network of hatred, a great machine of disinformation, and how the churches act as cogs in it. They’re tax-exempt media outlets channeling the extremism and cruelty that defines the conservative movement. The scale of it is intimidating. It made me feel weary, then I’d remind myself that resignation is the response they want to provoke. When I asked myself what I could do, the only answer I could think of was, “Speak.” But I didn’t speak much, certainly not enough. I’m not gay, I’m married, and the rights denied aren’t my own. I was complacent.

I also thought about how there was no straight line drawn between the churches and what’s right. The church across the street from Pittsboro Baptist, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal, had a sign up opposing the amendment for a while, though they took it down for some reason. While the leaders of the Baptist and Catholic churches misled their congregations, preached hatred and cruelty from the pulpit, and aligned themselves with the national political machine, the Episcopalian bishops opposed the amendment and provided their members with an accurate analysis. I know that in every one of those green counties above, there are people who voted against. And among those people who voted for it, there were many who had doubts, or would have voted differently if their spiritual leaders hadn’t cheated them of the truth.

So now it’s five days after the vote, and Pittsboro Baptist got to revel in a public, ritual humiliation of the people whose way of loving they despise. You’d think it would be enough for them. You’d think they might take the condescending step taken by the Catholic bishop in Raleigh who said he was praying that prayer would heal the divisions he caused (the abuser always begs forgiveness). But it seems the feeling that Pittsboro Baptist got from banding together to hurt vulnerable people was just too good to let go. The sign is there even now, five days later. It’s Sunday morning as I write, and they call their congregation to worship yet again without their pastor nor any other one of their godly leaders having thought to pick up the litter from in front of their sanctuary.

I probably made a dozen trips past the church after the vote, wondering what, exactly, the continued presence of the sign was supposed to tell me, before I read this extraordinary blog post by Rachel Held Evans, “How to win a culture war and lose a generation”. Read the whole thing, but she writes about how younger Christians are at odds with the punitive acts of legislations so beloved by Republican political hacks and older evangelicals. She’s basically saying with compassion what the NC’s House Speaker, Thom Tillis, who put the bill on the ballot, said about the amendment being repealed in twenty years.*

* Words which, astonishingly, were not immediate followed by, “And I hereby resign from office, because I am obviously too craven a son of a bitch to serve the public trust.”

Then I was glad. I hope the sign stays there until it biodegrades. It’s working for our side now. Every second that it stands there, it drives home the point – this church wages war.

Meanwhile, I want to extend my thanks to Pittsboro Baptist. Your gratuitous act of triumphalism has broken my complacency. I’m going to speak, and I’m joining the fight against you. You’re going to lose.