Pam's House Blend has another excellent post entitled, "Ain't that America: noose Mania," where blogger Pam Spaulding details some of the recent incidents of nooses being hanged on assorted public structures, undoubtedly designed to intimidate Afro-Americans, as well as to express the racism that exists in these twisted people's hearts.
Beyond the obvious, these series of incidents not only show that racism is certainly not dead in America, but that all of us can be considered to be minorities who are potential targets of hate. Therefore, when one discriminates against another person based on mere superficial skin color or mere sexual orientation, he/she is exhibiting the very same kinds of hateful behavior as the person who hangs a noose so that others can "get the message" that that noose is designed to convey, particularly given our Nation's history of racism.
When Afro-American clergy and their followers, for example, demonize Gay people, they are doing the very same thing to Gay people as is being done to them when a noose is publicly displayed!
All people who in any way discriminate against LGBT people should be ashamed, and Afro-American clergy and their followers who discriminate against LGBT people should be especially ashamed, both for spitting in the face of God, for betraying the Gospel of grace, and for defaming others just as they were, and are, defamed! Of all people in the United States who should know the horrors of persecution, and who should be solidly behind the movement for all people to have full and equal civil and sacramental rights, it should be Afro-Americans!
Additionally, what makes homophobia in the Black community so egregious and pathetic is the fact that homophobic clergy and their followers are aligning themselves with people who would not likely want their daughters to marry their sons; who would not like to have them as neighbors; who might even have empathy with those who would publicly hang nooses for all to see. They are frequently aligning themselves with those who hate them!
In recent years, the coarsening of American culture has exponentially increased, and it has been clergy in most of the institutional Church, through their hateful, homophobic rhetoric and/or through their silence in the face of such rhetoric that stimulates the oppression of LGBT people, who have helped foment and exacerbate this increase!
There is money to be made, fame to be achieved, self-righteousness to be made visible, and one's inner rage to be externalized, in creating "the enemy,""the other!"
And LGBT people have now become the minority group du jour to be in the cross hairs of the "religious" and non-religious haters. However, as the hanging of the nooses makes crystal clear, Afro-Americans are still targets of hate, so the spectacle of homophobic Afro-Americans makes their homophobia that much more surreal!
And, when members of one minority group discriminate against members of another minority group, they are making it that much more likely that there will be a further increase in hateful acts against ALL minority groups, including their very own!
We are to make no mistake: When one discriminates against anyone for who he or she is, that person is doing the equivalent of hanging a noose in public, inviting hatred from others that feeds on itself until we are all engaged in a war of all against all!
And it's a crying shame when clergy and members of the institutional Church are directly and/or indirectly implicated in this hateful madness!
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