According to the fundamentalist Christians, glbt people are only sinning if we choose to act on the desire to have sex with a same sex person. This little bit of acrobatics was devised after so many of them were stung by the idea that hating on gay people was fundamentally in disagreement with the commandment to love their brothers and sisters. A few mysterious sainted fundamentalists put their heads together and realized that no, they didn't hate glbt people at all, but only the lifestyle! It was a brilliant sales technique, and peddlers of hate have been decorating their offerings with it since then.
As progressives, many of us have watched the Republicans drive out their base on election after election by throwing anti-gay measures on the ballot. We have watched in despair as the Republicans take us farther and farther from what we understand to be America.
I have watched too. I grew up in a fundamentalist church, and I am no stranger to the bigotry and hatred that fundamentalists attempt to justify with their twisted reading of the Bible. I have watched these so called Christians flex their electoral muscle and in the process deny fellow citizens their civil rights all the while whining about how Christian rights are being taken away. I have watched as many, many of these so called Christians get exposed as gay or as child predators or as financial scammers.
They say you aren't a sinner if you don't act on your gay feelings, but what I think they mean is that you aren't a sinner if you don't get caught acting on your gay feelings. They say they love us, but they hold dead kids up as an example of how being gay leads to such shame that we have to kill ourselves.
They say being gay is a choice. What that says to me is that at least some of them are choosing to go against who they really are, and they are succeeding in getting the rest of their pals to believe that that crazy shit is rational or emotionally healthy or even possible.
Now everyone is entitled to live their life as they see fit. I really believe that. But that right only goes up to the boundary of your fellow citizen's life. Sadly, the people in our nation who should be defending the rights of all our citizens have been standing back and letting the crazy people call the shots. I know there are Christians who take the civil rights of their fellow citizens very seriously. I have talked to some of those Christians myself.
The questions is this, and I ask it in the context of children dying: is it time to stand up against these people and have a national dialog about the fact that fundamentalists are using the Bible to justify anti-Christian behavior?
I say yes. There are a bunch of dirty minded people in America, pretending that being glbt is not about someone's life, not about the person they love, not about their dreams and hopes, not about feeling a part of a community and a part of this country. Instead, they scream from the rooftops that to claim being glbt is to be obscene. Don't tell the children! According to these so-called Christians, being glbt is only about the sex.
It is interesting to me, that in a person's life, in the fabric of being someone's child, someone's partner, someone's student or teacher or parent or friend, that the only thing these perverts can see is sex. Yes, I called them perverts. What would you call them, these people so obsessed with gay sex that they can't see the whole life of a person for all the lurid scenes they imagine, and perhaps titillate themselves with?
This is a conversation that needs to take place from person to person. I know these people, and they don't want to be called a pervert. They will kick and scream and whine and demand to be taken seriously. But why in the world should they be taken seriously? They wanted Sarah Palin to be the Vice President of the United States. And when we finally stand up to them with a mirror and show them the actual Christians doing actual good works with actual love in their hearts, they will slink away from the spotlight, and we will have a few more adults in charge.