For the Love of G-O-D, Stay Home

No Me Digas. Op-Ed: Keith Price

This COVID-19 pandemic has caused the world to feel like it is folding in on itself in so many ways. Financially, we are deeply feeling the free-falling rollercoaster of a stock market. Non-essential businesses are closing or closed already, while unemployment becomes epic. Physically, we are confined to our homes and safe spaces for our well being now, because of the corrupt leadership that is handling this fiasco. Many pictures of New York City have such insane contrasts. 

We now have refrigerated trucks parked outside of hospitals as makeshift morgues while Times Square stays generally empty. And as seriously as we are ALL trying to take this situation, there are large pockets of people who are simply refusing to believe science or ACTUAL visual evidence.

 

The recent pictures of the Tampa preacher along with several other congregations around the country that are still having services with people in close proximity to each other, knowingly becoming vectors for spreading disease. With Easter and Passover upon us, the chances are high that more people will defy social distancing rules. Thank goodness that the pastor has been arrested, but now there is talk of religious exemption in all of the stay at home orders that are being put in place in the red states.  

I cringe because as much as I like to believe in the law, it seems that this climate has made these religious zealots seem either more powerful or just ridiculous. If only they could convene and stay together somewhere else other than here and practice their religion in a self-contained area. I think that American history shows that this idea did not work for Jim Jones, and these current snake oil salesmen are going to get their congregations, along with the rest of us, killed. Some might suggest that is the point. We have all seen enough apocalyptical, zombie infused films to know that during times like these, the religious sector of the population dies unnecessarily. It stems from the tug of war with their beliefs and what is happening around them, thereby exacerbating the problem. 

Whatever the zealots leave behind, the neoconservatives and racists will try to destroy the rest.

 

 

Also, as if not having great leadership from the national executive branch was detrimental, Georgia’s governor, who just learned only a few days ago that COVID19 can be transmitted via close contact made an executive order to allow people to go to public beaches AFTER the local governments closed them. It’s almost as if he wants people to die. For a long time, many of us have heard the conversation about 2045 being the year that White Americans will be the minority in this country. As this virus continues to ravage large swaths of people from every stratum of our population, I can see how it can happen. Now as I watch some of these reports, I notice that there are sprinklings of people of color involved in some of these church services and public beach moments. I also know that there are many within the LGBT+ population also defying this reality because my apps are still showing people trying to hook up in the time of COVID19. Perhaps in every population, some folks make you just shake your damn heads. These defiant folks are the ones putting the rest of us at risk, including our frontline medical teams. 

Now before I get labeled as some anti-Christian, gay, libtard, I will have you know that I grew up Southern Black Baptist. I was a member of the youth group, and I played piano for the choir. I attended Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, AND Baptist Training Union. I performed in every Easter and Christmas Extravaganza as an actor and later as an emcee. 

I served my time with the church, and my biggest takeaway is that there is too much contradiction to believe in ALL of that stuff they tell you growing up within those walls. Some of these people think that they are carrying out some prophecy in Revelations and willing the Rapture.

For all of us, the basic tenet should simply be “Don’t be an asshole”.

However, it can be updated for these wonderful people:  “Stay home and don’t be a disease-carrying asshole!”, and “Wash your hands for God and all of our sakes.”