The Unforgivable Sins Of Sodom And Gomorrah Poem by Ron Stock

A clanging bell in the steeple of a small, white clapboard Southern church invited folks to worship for an hour or so. The knell resonated in the cool air over a parking lot with older cars, around the well-maintained lawn and shrubbery, and through an orchard of old apple trees before dissolving into a lush green landscape, of rolling hills.
Three narrow, arched, stained-glass windows high off the ground, were framed into the east and west walls. A utility door opened to the back, the south. And a large, arched, bright red door, up three steps, under an elevated, covered front porch between two more stained-glass windows, welcomed the black congregation at the entrance.
Today's sermon, delivered by robust Reverend Baker, was a message on the sins of homosexuality. Sodomy. His words, he believed, delivered directly from God, focused on passages from the Bible: One: Jude 6-7. 'Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, in like manner, giving themselves to fornication and going after
strange flesh, are set forth as an example and will suffer the vengeance of eternal fire.' Two, Leviticus 18: 13: 'If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall be put to death.'
Two white Christian fundamentalist rednecks, racist members of the Ku Klux Klan, approached the church, one from the front, the other from the back, and set off high-powered gasoline firebombs at each entrance. The flames swooshed quickly and soon the seventy-five people inside, mostly older women and men, were trapped by the fire. In desperation, they began to use whatever they could find, including their Bibles and pew hymnals, to break out the stained-glass windows as an avenue of life-saving escape.
A strong, blond young man, Philip Jessie, happened by, and because of some Divine Providence from God, was driving his traveling salesman's service truck filled with fire extinguishers. As the people inside the church screamed for their salvation, Philip Jessie grabbed two extinguishers and raced to the front door. People were jumping out the high side windows, some breaking bones. Others, overcome by smoke, fell to the floor. Philip Jessie, weaving between the crackling flames with toxic fumes burning his eyes and intense heat searing his skin, emptied both extinguishers, then ran to his
truck for more. After exhausting his third extinguisher, several people, screaming or coughing, with kerchiefs over noses and mouths, ran out. Philip Jessie, using his fourth extinguisher to gain against the flames, moved inside the burning church and carried four fallen bodies, one by one, to safety. They survived. The structure was consumed.
Philip Jessie was married and had two little girls; a fine young man by all standards outside the Christian church. Philip Jessie's God was Mother Earth. The congregation didn't know that, and didn't care, the man had saved their lives and they were grateful.
What the congregation did care about, was that Philip Jessie's progressive parents, Lucy and Cheryl, had met a man at a party and asked him, to donate his sperm, for their love child. Later, the man masturbated into a jar. The women picked up the jar, went home,
made love, and inseminated Lucy with the seed of Philip Jessie, using, a turkey baster.