This tiny tiny church strives to make a big splash
Sure Foundation Baptist Church noticed that they have been getting a bit of attention. As a result they have become deeply upset about this. There is some material circulating that that makes them look very very bad.
In response to some tweets and articles by Hemant Mehta about them, they reached out via Twitter and demanded that he … quote … “should take your slanderous article down“.
Hemant responded.
Get ready to laugh long and hard.
Let’s welcome them to – The Streisand effect
There is some fun to be had here, so let’s take a look and see what the fuss is all about.
First, let’s do a quick bit of catchup.
I’m sure you probably know this, but the term “the streisand effect” dates back to 2003. That is when Barbra Streisand sued a photographer. He had created a comprehensive collection of about 12,000 pictures as part of the California Costal Records project to document costal erosion. One of them just happened to be of her house, and so she went to court because she wanted that picture obliterated. Prior to her lawsuit, the image of her house had been accessed six times. Two of those accesses had been by her lawyers. Because of her lawsuit the image was accessed by 420,000 people in the month after the lawsuit was started.
Not only was her case dismissed, but she also had to pay all the legal fees.
The Sure Foundation Baptist Church is so small and obscure that you will probably have never heard the name.
Pictured at the top of the posting is their actual church building. I googled the address on their website, 6501 E Mill Plain Blvd, Vancouver, WA 9866, and voila, it is more or less a cabin stuck in the middle of a shopping mall parking lot.
So what is the story here?
Hemant has had a running series of regular tweets about them. Below are a couple of examples so that you get the idea of the content …
It other words, Hemant grabs key extracts of the sermons that they publish online, and then simply tweets out the truly bizarre and deeply abhorrent bits.
They are now demanding that he remove all this “Slanderous” stuff.
There is a bit more, it is not just tweets
On June 20, Hemant posted on OnlySky this article – New IFB church member arrested for threatening to kill LGBTQ people.
That is about Tyler Dinsmoor. He was arrested for making credible threats against members of the gay community. Hemant goes into all the details. Just surf on over to his posting if curious.
So the point is this, guess which church Tyler is a member of?
Yep, you got it, Sure Foundation Baptist Church. Those are the people who have indoctrinated Tyler, who recently joined them, into a cult of hatred.
If you check out the local media stories of his arrest, then you also discover this …
Detective Sgt. Jennifer Gravel with the Oak Harbor Police Department wrote in her report on the case that a woman who lives at a North Whidbey home with her wife and children told police that Dinsmoor yelled at her from a nearby house that “it used to be legal to kill gay people,” the report states. The woman said the comment was especially frightening because a neighbor told her that Dinsmoor had previously pointed a gun at the neighbor’s nephew, who is Black…
…In various posts, Dinsmoor wrote that God hates gay people, that “sodomites all deserve to die,” that he wants the death penalty for all gay people and that “all homosexuals are child-rapists in wait, and all (every single one) should be put to death immediately,” the report states. He called another online commenter “a (slur for homosexual) sympathizer worthy of death.” He wrote that “it’s not murder if it’s a justified killing.”…
…Gardner wrote that she believes Dinsmoor is “an extreme risk to the public, especially the upcoming Pride events in the area.” She noted that he owns a semi-automatic rifle and other guns. The detective recommended that Dinsmoor be ordered to submit to a psychological evaluation if he’s released on bail.
I personally think that a lot of lives were just saved because of that arrest.
Sure Foundation Censorship
A few days after all of this, June 23, Sure Foundation, reached out to Hemant demanding that he remove his article.
Unfortunately for them, all that he really posts consists of screen-grabs of their insanity.
In other words, what they are demanding is this – “Stop slandering me by posting videos and quotes of the things I say!”.
Given the degree of passionate anti-gay rhetoric, I can’t help but seriously wonder if this is their way of hitting on Hemant.
Slander?
What is also fascinating, in a small way, is their complete lack of any understanding of of the word “slander”.
Slander is relates to the spoken word. The term they are after is Libel.
To be honest, that fact that they don’t understand “slander” is not such a surprise. These same folks also perhaps view terms such as “kindness”, “decency”, “tolerance”, and “compassion” as Satanic concepts.