Out of Bounds

When I'm in the car on Sundays, I purposely tune in to religious broadcasts, hoping to hear something that will piss me off and serve as blogging fodder.

And what I heard this Sunday really took the cake.

The preacher told a story about how his son and his son's friend went to the beach or an amusement park -- I tuned into the station when the show was already in progress, so I don't know exactly which.

The son and the friend had each bought a t-shirt of some rock group; I don't know which one, as the preacher didn't specify. Apparently, the t-shirt had a slogan printed on it that was a double entendre; what it said could be taken two ways.

The preacher and his wife immediately took the shirts away from both boys and took scissors to them, laboriously cutting them into very tiny pieces, then throwing the shreds away.

He justified his actions by saying that he wanted to save them from "a lot of embarrassment". Feel free to roll your eyes heavenward at this point.

The man has the right to raise his own son according to his own values, however bizarre and extreme this particular reaction was, but if I'd been the other boy's father, I'd have hit the roof. The preacher excused what he did to the friend's shirt by saying that the kid had it coming because he brought the offending object into his home.

Say what??

It would have been reasonable for him to have asked the boy to take the shirt out of his home and not to wear it when he came to visit, or even to have called the boy's parents about it, if it bothered him that much. However, he had no business in destroying the other boy's shirt -- he's not the boy's father and it's none of his business what the other boy wore. If I were the other boy's father, I'd have made him pay to replace the shirt -- and I'd encourage my son not to visit the preacher's home, as it's obvious to me that the man is more than a few bricks shy of a load.

Thoughts?