I was on Facebook a while back and the name of an old high school friend came to mind. I found him on facebook, then another classmate, then another. One one of the guy's pages, I saw a post about his outrage at a preacher.The guy had become a homosexual and had gotten so-called 'gay married.' I hadn't seen this guy since he was 14 in high school, so I didn't know. His partner had died, and he was upset about the funeral. A funeral had been arranged at a church. Instead of celebrating the dead homosexual partner's life, the preacher told the people who they needed to accept Jesus. He said the preacher didn't acknowledge him as the deceased husband or tell the stories he'd written down for the preacher to tell about the man's life. He only briefly mentioned one thing. Then he said that he and his brother talked about it (a fraternal twin I knew in school also) and decided not to give the preacher any money. He seemed to think he was really getting back at the preacher this way. He thought that the preacher hadn't done his job.I friended the guy so I could post a response. I posted, gently, a response defending the preacher. I said that the preacher's job is to get people ready to meet their maker. In a lot of church traditions, funerals aren't about 'celebrating someone's life.' It is difficult to tell stories of someone you don't know. That's better left to eulogies by friends and relatives. I told him he could have some kind of meeting to do that if he wanted to. I also pointed out that a lot of preachers like this do this as ministry and outreach, not as some kind of source of income, at least I hope that's the motivation. He didn't respond back. One guy responded back positively. Most comments were from people who thought like him, probably gays, who were outraged at the preacher for daring to preach the Gospel (presumably) at a funeral in the church building where this meeting was held.Then I kept getting messages on my facebook page about how much this guy missed his partner. I looked at older messages from the guy and I was concerned that posts might turn into pictures of dudes in their underpants and other stuff I didn't want to read, so I figured out how to unfollow him without defriending him. I figured I'd leave a door open for communication just in case
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