A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: A HERO WHO SEPARATES THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF

Thursday, April 17, 2008

A HERO WHO SEPARATES THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF

“'I know I will be cut off from many within the Christian community, and if so, then they didn’t get the point of the life of Christ. I believe by me living my life honestly and authentically now, I am able to be a better person and a better Christian. '" [For the full article, see here.]

Now, see the following two comments posted as they were written regarding that article concerning a man who courageously chooses to live an authentic Christian life:

Posted by Karen 04/17/08 10:00 CST

This is so sickening. I sure as heck hope that your "teachings" on your show to children all over does not now make you a HYPOCRITE in the eyes of GOD. Please do not from here on out refer to yourself as a "Christian" as the very meaning of this word is to be Christ like - and your lifestyle of CHOICE which you have now "come out" into is totally against the teachings of God in the Scriptures of The Holy Bible. Please, I beg you do not "sell" this lifestyle you have CHOISEN to the young people of the World. You and others like you CANNOT re-write Gods 10 Commendments nor re-invent His meaning behind each and every one of them and there is NO room for misinterpretation of any one of the Ten Commendments. You have CHOSEN your gay sex lifestyle please do not put the BURDEN on God to forgive you and accept YOU for the way YOU are - because HE did not "CREATE" you the way you have CHOSEN. As you should know - God will be there for you when you are ready to REPENT for your sinful ways. Wow, people like YOU make MY World inch closer and closer and closer each minute to the END - and I do not appreciate that. Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong - there is NO in between."

Posted by avennbrown 04/17/08 00:23 CST

Great work Azariah. As a pentecostal high profile preacher i'm well aware of the price one can pay to be honest with yourself and others. I came out 16 years ago now after 22 years trying everything to change my sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual including 16 years of marriage. I could never go back to living in the closet. its a dark place of fear and shame. Living with authenticity and integrity is so liberating. i'm sure your courage will inspire others as mine has.

Jesus says that we are to love and not judge others. Indeed, He says that all of the laws and commandments are fulfilled by love:

"Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40)

Given Jesus' teachings, and given that condemnation of homosexuality is found neither in the Ten Commandments, the writings of the prophets, or in the words we have of Jesus, which of these two people who wrote the above comments is a "Bible-believing" Christian?

To put a finer point on it, an atheist wrote:

"Posted by greenpointguy 04/17/08 07:07 CST

As an athiest, I say BRAVO to you...you are a true hero to countless terrified, closeted Christians, forced to follow SELECTIVELY chosen Levitican rules of behavior, written thousands of years ago by a tribe located halfway around the earth, with little to none of the cultural background of Americans today THANK YOU."

This self-proclaimed atheist shows far more understanding of biblical interpretation concerning homosexuality, and shows himself to be far more loving and understanding to another human being who risks losing "it all" for the sake of being an authentic Christian, than the professing "Christ-like" individual, Karen, and all who think like her, who would smugly and self-righteously spew such ignorant and hateful rhetoric against another human being.

It is someone like Azariah Southworth, the host of "The Remix," a popular Christian youth show, who comes out who is a vehicle for separating the wheat from the chaff; the Christian from the non-Christian; the sheep from the wolves.

Indeed, the atheist who commented has shown more understanding of the Gospel than do all the Karens out there.

God bless Azariah Southworth, and all the Azariah Southworths, who take Jesus' lesson to us very seriously and who seek to live out that lesson: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul." (Mark 8:36)

When Azariah Southworth says, regarding his coming out: "I know I will be cut off from many within the Christian community," he is tragically speaking the truth.

The fact is that anyone who would "cut him off," or keep silent when he is "cut off," is not a Christian, and no "Christian community" that is a Christian community in fact, would "cut him off," nor would it cut off any other Christian from full fellowship.

As I've written before, it is my firm belief that Gay people are currently God's instrument to separate the wheat from the chaff in the institutional Church!

UPDATE: 4/19/08 See here.

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FROM "THE CHRISTIAN LEFT"

"It’s easy to see the sinfulness and corruption of “the world” for what they are when you spend enough time reading what Jesus said. It has nothing to do with abortion and gay marriage. It has everything to do with the lust for money, power and control. Starving the poor and depriving the sick of health care, not caring for the least of these among us, is what angers God the most. It’s easy to see why the road is narrow. The world is very efficient at convincing even Christians that its agenda is good. When people try to carry out God’s agenda they’re labeled “Socialists” and demonized."

MUST-READING FOR THOSE INVOLVED IN THE LGBT CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE

In most Native American history, Gay, Lesbian, and/or Transgendered individuals were considered holy and treated with the highest respect. They were the historians, the healers, and the people of empowerment. They possessed the delicate balance of male and female, and were often honored for being unique and having a different spiritual calling. For their tribes, they were the mediators between the spirit world and the natural world. They were known in their separate languages as “naadle” (nad le) They who love their own kind, translation from the Navajo language; “winkte” (wink-day) would be woman, translation from the Lakota Sioux language; and “bade” (bah-day) male/female person, translation from the Hidatsa language. (By the staff of the Two-Spirit Society of Denver.)

CIVIL RIGHTS ARE NOT TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ELECTORATE!

We can't spend our time and tremendous amounts of monies trying to get the majority of the electorate to vote for equal rights. If integration of African Americans was put on the ballot in each state during the civil rights era, we would still have segregation and Jim Crow laws! There must be meaningful, coordinated, and aggressive grassroots, street, and organizational activism, coupled with the filing of civil suits at the federal level, to achieve equal rights. "Separate is not equal," and that fact must be, and undoubtedly will be, affirmed by the Judiciary in regard to Gay people, as it was for African Americans, and not left to the will and whim of the majority of the electorate, for to do so demeans Gay people, and puts each and every minority group's rights up for grabs. We would never think of putting one or more civil rights of Jews, of African Americans, of Asians, etc. on the ballot to be voted upon, and Gay people's civil rights must not be treated any differently.

Christianity Is A Lifestyle

Christianity is a lifestyle -- a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into a clever "religion," in order to avoid the lifestyle itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain, and still believe that Jesus is their "personal Lord and Savior." The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great. - Richard Rohr

THE BIBLE IS NOT GOD

The Bible is NOT God! To elevate the Bible to the status of God, not only is an injustice to scholarship and logic, but is a direct offense against God Himself. We are to have no idols other than God, and biblical literalists and many of those who seek to counter them, both use the Bible as an idol, elevating it to the point where they explicitly or implicitly believe that it contains all of God's Word to us. Jesus is God's Word, and Jesus makes very clear what God expects of His followers: to trust God over and above seen circumstances, and to love other people! That's what puts the lie to homophobic professing Christians' selective use of certain biblical passages to "justify" and impose their hateful prejudices on others; their re-defining Christianity, and God Himself, in their own image, thereby using not only the Bible, but themselves, as their idols; ignoring Jesus' words, work, ministry, and life! The Bible is best viewed as a "finger" that points us to a couple of the many dimensions of God. What the biblical literalists do is equivalent to the following: If I ask you where you live and you point in a given direction and I just keep staring at your finger, I'll soon come to know everything about your finger, its size, shape, fingerprint, and every single detail about your finger, but I won't come any closer to knowing where you live. I have to look to the place where your finger is pointing in order to know where you live. The same holds true for those who elevate the Bible as being the "inerrant word of God." No! Only God is the Inerrant Word!

LGBT PEOPLE AS "EUNUCHS SO BORN FROM THEIR MOTHER'S WOMB."

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb.... (Matthew 19:12)

I don't think any scholar who is truly spiritually sensitive can not see that "eunuchs so born from their mother's womb" refers to Gay and Transgender people who, on this earth, most closely reflect God Who is Spirit and Who transcends gender. LGBT people are God's gift to this world, and to His Church. Too many of the former largely reject that gift; Christ's Church, unfortunately, seems to comprise very few within the institutional Church.

THE CONFUSION OF "HEDONISM" WITH "GAY."

In my opinion, a distinction has to be made between "hedonism" and "Gay," and much public persona of Gay people, and the commentators on all too many LGBT-oriented sites, seem to be more hedonistic than Gay. Frivolity, indecency, and use of hateful epithets as self-identifiers tell us far more about them than it does about Gay people. They use "queer" because they feel "queer," and don't see being Gay in any other terms than being "indecent" and "abnormal." And many of them pride themselves on being outsiders! This reflects their psyches, and they are too dense to accept that fact, let alone change their rhetoric and self-perceptions. They resent anyone who tells them that they are not "mistakes," and that dignity is essential in living one's life, and they undoubtedly thrive on lack of such dignity. I learned a lot from a transgender woman, for example, when she resented the fact that I said that she wasn't a mistake! She tenaciously hung on to the fact that she is a mistake and resented any other possibility. The same is true for most Gay people who comment on assorted Gay-oriented sites. Blindly accepting the oppressor's rhetoric and actions has done inordinate harm to many LGBT people, and that's a great deal of what we must fight against.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AUGUST 4, 1857

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.

A NOTE ON THE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE USE OF PEJORATIVE SELF-IDENTIFIERS

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISM, BY DON CHARLES

1. Thou shalt not address thyself or thy kind with inaccurate, disrespectful or dehumanizing labels, nor shalt thou do or say anything to marginalize thyself or enable thy own oppression.

2. Thou shalt not treat thy moral crusade like a political campaign. Thou shalt not value the welfare of political parties over the welfare of LGBT folk, nor shalt thou bind the equality movement to any political party.

3. Thou shalt not disrespect transgender identity or transgender bodies, and thou shalt not kick thy transsexual brethren to the curb for political advantage. Thou shalt endeavor to rid thy movement of transphobia as well as biphobia, sexism, heterosexism, racism, sexual racism, ageism and class bias.

4. Thou shalt not defend, attend or fund any religious institution which preaches genocide against LGBT folk, and thou shalt pursue separation of church and state with all thy mind, heart and soul. Thou shalt directly confront religious institutions that preach LGBT genocide, and thou shalt use authentic, inclusive theology as a weapon against hateful doctrine.

5. Thou shalt not use the equality movement as thy vehicle for exhibitionism, hedonism, political ambition or self-promotion.

6. Thou shalt not excuse any form of inequality (such as exclusion from marriage or military service) on ideological grounds, and thou shalt not give LGBT equality less importance than other social issues.

7. Thou shalt vigilantly police media representations of LGBT folk for demeaning, ridiculous and vilifying portrayals, and thou shalt not fail to include Gay media in thy policings.

8. Thou shalt preach the gospel of comprehensive sex education. Thou shalt promote intelligent conversation about human sexuality, express thy own sexuality without shame, be considerate of thy sexual partners, and shun sex practices that are unhealthy, irresponsible or illegal.

9. Thou shalt access public and private education systems and use those systems to diminish fear and ignorance about LGBT people. Thou shalt not be turned aside from this goal by scurrilous accusations of "recruitment".

10. Thou shalt protect, nurture and serve as role models for LGBT youth, and thou shalt protect, honor and provide for LGBT elders.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

A HERO WHO SEPARATES THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF

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