A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: FEAR OF RETRIBUTION AMONG DISSIDENTS IN THE LDS CHURCH REGARDING THEIR OBJECTIONS TO CALIFORNIA'S PROP. 8

Saturday, August 23, 2008

FEAR OF RETRIBUTION AMONG DISSIDENTS IN THE LDS CHURCH REGARDING THEIR OBJECTIONS TO CALIFORNIA'S PROP. 8

This article is both encouraging and revealing at the same time.

Notice the line: "In an e-mail, site managers at lds4gaymarriage declined to be identified for this story, saying no one was willing to give their names 'because of the fear of retribution by the church.'"

"Religion" breeds fear! The Spirit breeds freedom!

Christianity is of the Spirit of the Lord, if it's Christianity in fact! Freedom of thought, freedom to disagree, freedom to hear, obey, and share the voice of God in one's daily life, relationships, and ministry are what characterize the "ecclesia," the "called out ones" who comprise the Church of Jesus Christ! The rest are impostors!

Christianity knows nothing of fear; gives no quarter to wolves in sheep's clothing; knows nothing about discrimination or advocacy of discrimination against any of God's children; knows nothing about any mere human mediator between the Christian and God!

Jesus is our only Mediator! Jesus defines the call on each of our lives, and no mere human being dare interfere with that call!

You wouldn't know it from most of the assorted professing Christians and clergy who monopolize the airwaves, and who inhabit most of the leadership positions within the institutional Church and the Mormon Church, and who preach their false gospel of exclusion from assorted pulpits throughout the world, but Jesus brings freedom from yokes of bondage.

Moreover, is these very types of legalistic and oppressive religious leaders and clergy who were roundly condemned by Jesus!
I urge you to open your Bibles and read the following verses: Matthew 23:13-15; 23; 25; 27; 29.

It is by no means any accident that the very first recorded words taught by Jesus as he began His public ministry were the following: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." (Luke 4:18-19)

Echoing this pronouncement by Jesus, the Apostle Paul wrote the following: "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (2Corinthians 3:17)

Why would anyone voluntarily want to be part of any religion that placed such yokes of bondage upon him or her that he or she was afraid to speak his or her mind; was afraid to disagree with that church's leaders; was afraid of being ostracized by others due to his or her beliefs; fear church "discipline?"

Kim Farah, spokesperson for the 13 million member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, was quoted as saying the following, that speaks volumes:

"'The Church, of course, recognizes and accepts that some among its very large membership may view the issue differently,' Farah said in a statement. But members who engage in clear opposition to church doctrine may cause local leaders to consider church disciplinary action, Farah said."

What an indictment of the LDS Church! When people are afraid to speak Jesus' message of freedom from yokes of bondage; are repulsed by discrimination against any of God's children; are offended by a church's advocacy of constitutionally mandating removal of civil rights from same-sex couples who want to marry; are afraid of being "disciplined" by those who claim to represent Jesus' church, something has gone horribly wrong!

You might want to check out the site: Latter Day Saint Doctrine And The Case For Civil Same-Sex Marriage.

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2 comments:

genevieve said...: The article was quite revealing in that people fear men rather than fear God. Jesus spoke so eloquently in the the passage in Matthew about the leaders of the church in his time. the same is happening today.

I'm thankful for the those who have chosen to speak out. No person should not have to deny who they are. As a transgender individual, I fully support same sex marriage AND I am a born again Christian.

Genevieve; August 24, 2008 at 8:45 AM
Jerry Maneker said...: Thanks Genevieve. And the message that has to be broadcast is that there is absolutely NO inconsistency between being Gay and/or Transgender! Thanks for that statement! It needs to be widely disseminated.; August 24, 2008 at 1:55 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.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

FEAR OF RETRIBUTION AMONG DISSIDENTS IN THE LDS CHURCH REGARDING THEIR OBJECTIONS TO CALIFORNIA'S PROP. 8

2 comments:

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