Thread by @R_Denhollander

The man who murdered women in a massage parlor yesterday says he was "eliminating temptation" because he had a sex addiction.

He was a baptized member of an SBC church.

Brothers. Pastors. Seminary heads. How you teach sexuality matters. It can be life and death...

How you teach gender roles, and how you talk about women, how you sexualize them as temptations or dangers, matters. It can be life and death.

The way you indirectly blame women for abuse, lust, assault, "temptation", can be life and death.

This is happening in your pulpits, in your seminaries, in your counseling programs. It is in your marriage books, your books on womanhood and manhood, it is in your counseling sessions. It is in your purity books and discussions. It is in your social media.

It is in the way you treated and criticized Beth Moore, Aimee Byrd, Rachel Green Miller. Me. It is in how you defamed Jen Lyell, refused to hear Jules Woodson. It is how Paige Patterson treated Megan and "Jane". It is in how "Jane" was treated by John McArthur.

We have been pleading with you and begging you to see and hear what you are really communicating and the very real dangers it poses to women - the way it enables and minimizes abuse, and even encourages violence in unhinged people who take your positions to extreme conclusions.

But you turn a deaf ear, and further malign the advocates and women raising their voices.

Your words, your teachings, your actions matter. The messages you send and imply and the culture it creates, matters. Real people pay the price.

I am devastated.

(Got derailed by some business meetings. . .cont:) We also have to grapple with the intersection of race here. Minority communities are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and violence, and bear an even higher cost for these types of teachings. It matters. It's dangerous.