I rode my bike down along San Diego's waterfront this morning and that got me thinking about Joseph Conrad's stories... remembering his remarkable thinking and writing, especially The Heart of Darkness, and "The Secret Sharer"... and that got me thinking again about that ridiculous North Carolina pastor who proposed putting all the world's gays and lesbians into pens and surrounding them with electrified fences and leaving them there to die. I skimmed once again The Heart of Darkness and then reread slowly Conrad’s short story, The Secret Sharer.  Wow!  Conrad says, “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it much.” I posted a note on Facebook a couple of days ago... Here it is again: 

Providence Road Baptist Church's Pastor Charles Worley at age 71 has obviously missed the whole point of the Christian Gospel.  What a pity!  It's hard to understand how such bigotry and hate can exist anywhere, but it's especially unsettling to see such monstrous ugliness in a church.  Many people have expressed outrage at his suggestion that all gays and lesbians should be put in a place that could be surrounded by an electric fence and left there to eventually die.  I am not outraged so much as I am deeply saddened that such a pitiful creature as Pastor Worley could have survived in the "world of church"... not just survived but that he is applauded by some in his congregation for his ignorance.   He is neither scholarly theologian nor learned historian.  First, he has somehow completely missed the point of the life and teachings of Jesus, a Jew; and he apparently doesn't know about that other man-turned-monster who administered a project three quarters of a century ago to round up all the Jews in Europe first and eventually in all the world and surround them with electric fences and guards, and kill them.  Adolph Hitler, with complicity of millions of Christians, who also obviously didn't understand the Gospel, managed to kill five to six million people (Jews and homosexuals and dissenting German Christians) before his project was stopped.  The world mourned.  We are still mourning... and along comes another monster looking for all the world like a nice old grandfather.  Pity.  The man who says his life is dedicated to saving souls has lost his own.