A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: LEGALLY PUNISHING ANTI-CHRISTIAN RHETORIC THAT IS FALSELY DEFINED AS BEING "CHRISTIAN"

Monday, May 3, 2010

LEGALLY PUNISHING ANTI-CHRISTIAN RHETORIC THAT IS FALSELY DEFINED AS BEING "CHRISTIAN"

Dale McAlpine was charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress” after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of “sins” referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.

The 42-year-old Baptist, who has preached Christianity in Wokington, Cumbria for years, said he did not mention homosexuality while delivering a sermon from the top of a stepladder, but admitted telling a passing shopper that he believed it went against the word of God....

The Public Order Act, which outlaws the unreasonable use of abusive language likely to cause distress, has been used to arrest religious people in a number of similar cases.

Harry Hammond, a pensioner, was convicted under Section 5 of the Act in 2002 for holding up a sign saying “Stop immorality. Stop Homosexuality. Stop Lesbianism. Jesus is Lord” while preaching in Bournemouth.

[For the full article, see here.]

Clearly, I am not against preaching the Gospel! However, what is being preached by all too many professing "Christian evangelists" and clergy is not the Gospel of Christ and, therefore, must not come, nor does it come, under the rubric of anything that has to do with Christianity!

One can't preach hate; deny the dignity of a given group of people; bear false witness against others; seek to deny civil rights to others; wittingly or unwittingly foment hate in others; encourage discrimination against others; even wittingly or unwittingly encourage aggressive acts against others and, when prevented from expressing his/her unChristian prejudices, claim religious discrimination.

It is downright irrational to claim lack of freedom of Christian expression when that very expression is unChristian!

So, what is "Christian expression" and what is "the Gospel" that is the very essence of Christianity, and with which Christianity is not only to be identified but which comprises all of Christianity and the Christian life?

The only Gospel to be found in Christianity is the Gospel of Grace (God's unmerited favor to all those who trust God over and above seen circumstances); Faith (trusting God over and above seen circumstances and it is through such faith that we appropriate God's grace); Love (putting others' interests and feelings ahead of our own regardless of how we feel); Peace; Reconciliation; Inclusiveness.

Christianity has nothing to do with exclusion, hateful rhetoric, advocacy of discrimination, discriminatory acts, bearing false witness against others, seeking to harm others in any way! Such behaviors betray not only unChristian sentiments and prejudices, but spit in the very face of God and Christ's Church (which is not to be confused with the institutionalized Church).

Christ's Church is made up of the "ecclesia," "the called out ones," called out by God from the foundation of the world (e.g., Ephesians 1:4) to be God's own possession and to be Jesus' disciples. God calls out God's own, and merely belonging to one of the denominations or churches within the institutional Church does not necessarily denote belonging to Christ's Church and being a called out disciple of Christ!

Therefore, I have no qualms at all when a person who preaches hate and discrimination in the name of God or of Christianity is arrested in Britain. I just wish "thug Christianity" that exists in the U.S. and elsewhere were also subject to that kind of legal redress!

There would be no such need to punish anti-Christian rhetoric that is done in the name of "Christianity" if the true disciples of Christ expressed outrage at this preaching of a false gospel that causes so much suffering to so many people; these disciples publicly confronted as heretical that hateful and discriminatory rhetoric that ignorantly and/or cynically passes itself off as being "Godly," "Christian," and "biblical."

But the resounding silence of most of those who call themselves "Christians" is palpably unChristian, unjust, and unGodly, and helps the purveyors of the false gospel of legalism, perfectionism, discrimination, and exclusion define "Christianity" for others, and continue to cause the untold suffering of LGBT people.

Therefore, if some of the disciples of Christ, and the clerical leaders of most denominations within the institutional Church, and all those thugs who vainly profess to be Christians, do not speak out against this perversion of Christianity, let the secular judiciary help lead the way in mitigating the suffering of LGBT people as they also did, under the same religious conditions of demagoguery and silence, regarding women's and African Americans' dignity and civil rights.

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4 comments:

Ana Alocas said...: sing it baby! As a gay christian I am highly offended by such behaviors!; May 3, 2010 at 6:49 AM
Jerry Maneker said...: Thanks Ana. All decent people, Gay or Straight, must be offended by such behaviors! What boggles my mind is that so many people who view themselves as "decent," and even claim to be "Christians," discriminate against others and/or keep silent when others are being oppressed and denied full and equal civil rights. Best wishes, Jerry.; May 3, 2010 at 8:36 AM
DC HAMPTON JACOBS said...: "Thug Christianity"! Jerry, you're a genius for coining terms that are right-on-target. This essay is on-target, too. I'm cross-posting it to TaylorMarsh.com.; May 3, 2010 at 9:28 AM
Jerry Maneker said...: Thanks Don Charles, but I didn't coin the term. It was coined by Bishop Leland Somers a long time ago and I appropriated that term. But it does fit! Best wishes, Jerry.; May 3, 2010 at 9:40 AM

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.

Monday, May 3, 2010

LEGALLY PUNISHING ANTI-CHRISTIAN RHETORIC THAT IS FALSELY DEFINED AS BEING "CHRISTIAN"

4 comments:

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