It may have been the crowd of tourists from Paraguay that came through Nashville back during the summer, chattering away about people that they saw during their visit. Or it could have been latest music awards festival held there, and the fistfights that followed what seemed like the type of talk that had occurred for centuries.
In any case, the Board of Directors of the Baptist Church, in one of the most stunning reversals in history, has decided to switch its condemnation from sexual activity of all types to gossip.
"We just decided that gossip really was, and always has been, the greater danger to society," said Thomas Malicious, President of the group. "I don't know how we missed it over the centuries. Sexual activity has its things to be concerned about, like disease and pregnancy, but people engaged in sexual activity don't really intend to hurt anybody. Whereas gossipy people really do..."
Asked if the change of heart included all forms of voluntary activity crossing the lines of sexual orientation and unorthodox activity, Malicious replied, "Oh, yes, we've made a clean break. We realize that different people are going to get into different things, and as long as they don't force anyone else into them, we are OK with it. Nobody ever volunteers to be gossiped about."
"We even realized," he went on, "that there is a similarity between the two activities. When a person gossips, their cheeks flush, their veins stand out, their heart pounds. We began to see how many of our members were actually substituting harmful gossip for healthy sex, trying to cause the same sensations to the body, but without having to be nice to somebody else, on the contrary being mean to them. I think that was the clincher. This is really about getting our members back to good health.
Malicious added that it had been a personal matter to him as well; a cousin of his with the last name of Gossip had, a year or two ago, named her first-born after him, giving it his last name as the infant's first name. "I guess we all learned something here in our own way."
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