Suffer The Children To Come Unto Me, And I Will Wail On Those Little Buggers

You know, when we were little Ironicii one of the ideas the nuns beat into our heads (sometimes literally) was that without religion the world would degenerate into a pitiless, desolate wasteland where the strong preyed on the weak, no one could be trusted and life was cheap. Sort of like recess we remember thinking.

The point is, the civilizing power of religion was one if its strongest selling points in their view. It occurred to us that this civilizing function's mechanism was the threat of eternal damnation to lakes of fire and worms in your eyes, which didn't sound all that civilized to us, but we refrained from pointing out this apparent contradiction to the nuns as our addled pates had already had enough ideas beaten into them.

We bring this up because it appears that when it comes to religion bringing out the better angels of our nature, some folks' pates are apparently even more addled than ours.

A gay Gibson County couple said they were assaulted when they tried to attend church services at the Grace Fellowship Church in Fruitland last Wednesday.

Yeah, yeah, gay couple going to church in Fruitland. We saw that, but come on, some jokes are too easy even for us. And by too easy we mean we're too lazy even to make the joke, we just point it out and expect you to do all the work. Thank you. And now back to our story.

"I went over to take the keys out of the ignition and all the sudden I hear someone say 'sick'em,'" said Gibson County resident, Jerry Pittman Jr. Pittman said the attack was prompted by the pastor of the church, Jerry Pittman, his father.

 Now that's just about 17 different kinds of weird right there. Dude's a pastor and he sends his posse to thump on his very own son? What is this, the Church of Coming Upside Your Heathen Head for Jesus?

"My uncle and two other deacons came over to the car per my dad's request. My uncle smashed me in the door as the other deacon knocked my boyfriend back so he couldn't help me, punching him in his face and his chest. The other deacon came and hit me through my car window in my back," said Pittman.

OK we're thinking family gatherings have to be kind of strained in the Pittman household.

Friday, the couple filed assault charges against Deacons Billy Sims and Eugene McCoy. Pittman pressed additional charges against his father and Deacon Patrick Flatt. Pastor Pittman's attorney contacted ABC 7 Eyewitness News by phone and said she had no comment and demanded we not contact the pastor.

"Pastor Pittman is a man of god," the attorney said. "He believes in loving his neighbor, forgiveness and turning the other cheek, and if you question his commitment to our personal savior Jesus Christ and the ten commandments,  he will mess you up."