A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: ON THIS NATIONAL DAY OF SILENCE

Friday, April 25, 2008

ON THIS NATIONAL DAY OF SILENCE

To honor our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender sisters and brothers, this is the 2008 National Day of Silence. In that vein, I want to make this a short post by stating that God values only one thing in a person: Faith! The only way we appropriate God's grace to us, and please God, is by trusting Him over and above seen circumstances!

The best way we can show our faith in God is by being authentic! We do God absolutely no favors if we seek to be anything other than what He made us to be, or if we in any way feel guilty for who God made us to be!

Indeed, we show a decided lack of faith if we behave in ways that are inauthentic for us in our uniqueness. For example, if one is Gay, he or she is committing a grievous sin if he or she seeks to be anything other than that!

To seek to deny one's uniqueness as made in the image of God, made as God wanted to make each of His children in our uniqueness, is to not only throw God's grace back in His face, but to throw His very creation and sovereign choices back in His face, and to inhibit or prevent our living out God's purpose for each of our lives.

We do ourselves no favors by living inauthentic lives! Indeed, we defame God by living inauthentic lives!

So, to seek to be anything other than who God made us to be is to show a profound distrust, or lack of faith, in God.

Moreover, to seek to change another person to be in conformity with what one thinks that God wants for that person, is to be extraordinarily prideful and arrogant, in that those who seek to do so are placing themselves in the place of God.

Those who seek to change another to meet what he/she thinks is "Godly," "moral," "biblical," and "right," are denying the sovereignty of God Who can't possibly be contained within the contents of any book or within the minds of mere fallible human beings!

God doesn't make predators, and it's predators who seek to change others from the image, the very person, that God made of them! They are substituting their own judgments, prejudices, biblical interpretations, and mind-sets for the sovereign choices of God, thereby usurping God's position in a person's life, in the world, and God's position as our Creator.

Indeed, these predators, professing Christians or not, are making idols of themselves and their prejudices, judgments, and mind-sets! They are really worshiping themselves and their own values and traditions, and that worship is a direct offense against God and against their fellow human beings.

On this National Day of Silence, let's be mindful of the fact that God doesn't make any mistakes! God created each of us in our uniqueness according to His sovereign will!

And for anyone else to tell us who we are to be, or how we are to behave, or what values we are to hold, or who condemn us for not conforming to the expectations of mere fallible human beings, be they clergy or not, be they family or not, be they acquaintances or not, be they professing Christians or not, are putting themselves in the place of God, and there is no greater sin than that!

Please be content with the person God created you to be! Please recognize that you are a person of inestimable worth, and that God has had His hands on you from the time you were in your mother's womb!

Even if the whole world disagrees with you, and even if the whole world condemns you, then the whole world is fighting against God's sovereign will, and the whole world would be wrong! And I'm absolutely convinced that God's will for all whom He chose from the foundation of the world who lead authentic lives before Him and before the world, will prevail!

Let this National Day of Silence be a time where we all take heart and internalize this message, and realize that the best days are ahead of us!

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4 comments:

jadedjabber said...: Amen!!!; April 26, 2008 at 10:48 AM
Jerry Maneker said...: Thanks Jadedjabber. I added your excellent blog to my links. We keep on fighting until they shove six feet of dirt in our faces! Best wishes, Jerry.; April 26, 2008 at 11:49 AM
SavvyD said...: So HORRIBLE! Why does anyone think hate is the answer? I always end up loving the gay kids--way back in high school my best friends were always gay boys.; May 10, 2008 at 12:58 PM
Jerry Maneker said...: Hi savvyd: Hate can only be "the answer" for those who are not Godly! Anyone with even a cursory understanding of the Gospel understands that Christians are called upon to love and not judge others. Anyone who hates and/or seeks to exclude others from full and equal civil and sacramental rights is not a Christian, despite his/her protestations to the contrary.; May 10, 2008 at 3:49 PM

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.

Friday, April 25, 2008

ON THIS NATIONAL DAY OF SILENCE

4 comments:

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