It might surprise many of you that I am a very theologically conservative Christian! I believe in the virgin birth of Jesus; the Resurrection; the Ascension of Jesus into heaven; His Sacrifice that covers over all of our past, present, and future sins. I also believe that the Bible is the Word of God that I take very seriously.
I agree with the late Rev. Peter J. Gomes who, in his excellent book, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, stated that when we read the Bible, we must take into account the text, the subtext, the context, what we bring to the text, and what we take out of the text. Reading the Bible is not for simplistic and arrogant haters who use it to affirm and impose their preconceived prejudices onto others, and use it as a hammer to in any way hurt or condemn anyone.
A Christian is called upon by Jesus to love and not judge others! The two Commandments Jesus gave all who would be His disciples are to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength; to love our neighbor as ourselves! Period!
No Christian is subject to the laws laid down for Jews in the Old Testament! Anyone who uses the Old Testament to in any way trash LGBT people is either a very immature Christian or is not a Christian at all!
All Christians are given their salvation by the grace, or unmerited favor, of God! And we appropriate that grace by having unwavering faith in God, despite seen circumstances. Hence, those who preach a false gospel of legalism, perfectionism, and what I call “genital theology,” are “missing the mark,” which is the very definition of “sin.”
Many people who condemn others, who seek to deprive LGBT people of equal civil and sacramental rights, are therefore not Christians, despite what they call themselves, and despite the fact that they may even attend church each and every week. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going into a garage makes you a car!
As I have often written, Christianity is very consistent with same-sex love! There is nothing in Scripture that prevents same-sex love and same-sex marriage! Indeed, love is essential to the Christian life, and that love is by no means to be restricted to heterosexual love!
Don’t be fooled by professing Christians, many of whom are mere haters, who “bear false witness” against Gay people, thereby contravening one of the Ten Commandments. They say such outrageous things that Gay people caused Hurricane Katrina, are destroying the institution of marriage, are “disordered,” etc. These allegations are foolish on their face, and only a very limited and hateful human being could assert them or take such allegations seriously!
I have been an LGBT activist for about twenty years and, as you might imagine, I have been verbally assaulted by assorted professing Christians accusing me of not being a Christian and not respecting “the sanctity of marriage." They refuse to see that it is heterosexually married couples that, by divorce, are hurting the institution of marriage and disrespecting its sanctity!
My wife and I are about to celebrate our fiftieth Wedding Anniversary, and we both are in agreement that we want same-sex couples to be allowed to get married if they so choose so that they can not only receive the many civil benefits that accrue to married couples, but also be enabled to experience the love and fulfillment like that with which my wife and I have been blessed!
But when LGBT people denigrate themselves by using hateful epithets as self-identifiers, or engage in publicly promiscuous behaviors, or relish in their being consigned to pariah status as sexual outlaws, those actions betray and thereby retard the cause of equality! Only meaningful organizational and grassroots activism, combined with the dignified comportment and the demand by LGBT people to be treated with the dignity that must be the lot of every human being, will we accomplish the goal of LGBT equality in this Civil Rights movement.
It won’t occur in my lifetime, but I truly pray that in the foreseeable future same-sex couples will be awarded the very same rights as heterosexuals now enjoy, and that those who choose to get married will be blessed with the happiness and fulfillment that my wife and I have enjoyed for the past fifty years!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
THE IGNORANT ATTEMPT TO "TRANSFORM" GAY PEOPLE
His [Phillip Lee] Way Out ministry contends in its brochures that its position comes from the authority of Scripture rather than social sciences and medicine.
The ''sexually broken'' can be transformed through close reading of Scripture and openly discussing temptations, the ministry contends.
"Since it is acquired it can be unacquired." Lee said. "And like I said, a lot of people have bought into the born-that-way theory. There's no Scripture to support that theory."
[For the full article entitled, “Bakersfield ministry aims at transforming gays,” see the November 24, 2009 edition of KGET.Com.]
How often we have heard from professing Christian homophobes that being Gay is "an inclination," "a life style," "a temptation," "a sin" by their referring to what they call "the authority of Scripture!" The fact is that that reference to, and interpretation of, Scripture is a lie perpetrated by the ignorant and/or the mendacious and/or the haters in the world!
I defy anyone to show me chapter and verse where same-sex love is condemned, or where same-sex marriage is condemned!
To resort to some Old Testament passages to support the specious argument that being Gay is destructive is terribly misleading, not only because Christians are not bound by the laws of the Old Testament, and that the context of these "clobber passages" are in the framework of a tribal society living on the edge that needed to propagate in order to survive, but that other cultural practices in ancient Israel are affirmed in the Bible that no sane person would currently adopt, such as stoning to death recalcitrant children, stoning to death those caught in adultery, and stoning to death those who work on the Sabbath. I'm not even going into such prohibitions listed in the Bible as the eating shell-fish and the wearing of mixed fibers in one's clothes!
More to the point, the attempt to "transform," or in any way suppress, that which God has made is a sin in and of itself!
Being Gay is "acquired" the same way that being Straight is "acquired!" God made us in these ways, and it is a sin to thwart God's plan for any of God's children, for to do so not only does inexplicable harm to that person, but also thwarts the will of God and shows a definite lack of trust in God and in God's plan for each person's life!
Even secular psychologists affirm the possible danger that accrues to those who are the victims of attempts to change their sexual orientation, and Christians should know enough to agree with that affirmation as well, even on purely biblical grounds. Our sexuality is a wonderful gift from God, and that is true whether we were created to be Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgender!
The love story of David and Jonathan (1Samuel 18-20), and the story of Deborah (Judges 4-5), a Judge and fierce and well-respected warrior in Israel whom I have always considered to be Transgender, shows that God mightily uses God's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender children for God's own purposes; God creates us the way God wants, and God doesn't make any mistakes!
For those who believe in "transforming" Gay people into something other than the way they were created to be by God is to show a decided lack of faith in God, and the Bible makes very clear that without faith it is impossible to please God! (See, for example, Hebrews 11:6.)
So, it is those who don't trust God and God's creative abilities, and who think that God makes mistakes, and who refuse to understand that God specializes in diversity, who are the real sinners!
And LGBT people who are comfortable in and with their own bodies, knowing that they are not some mistake, know that God created them just as God ordained from the foundation of the world (for example, see Ephesians 1:4), who are the ones who express their faith in God, and are thereby enabled to live the abundant life that Jesus promises all of us who abide in Him!
Please don't listen to ignorant wolves in sheep's clothing, be they clergy or not, who are seeking to thwart God's will for your life!
Put your full trust in God, and don't trust the rhetoric of others who may well have prejudices based upon unresolved sexual conflicts in their own lives, thereby trying with all their might to suppress in you what they are often trying to suppress in themselves!
The ''sexually broken'' can be transformed through close reading of Scripture and openly discussing temptations, the ministry contends.
"Since it is acquired it can be unacquired." Lee said. "And like I said, a lot of people have bought into the born-that-way theory. There's no Scripture to support that theory."
[For the full article entitled, “Bakersfield ministry aims at transforming gays,” see the November 24, 2009 edition of KGET.Com.]
How often we have heard from professing Christian homophobes that being Gay is "an inclination," "a life style," "a temptation," "a sin" by their referring to what they call "the authority of Scripture!" The fact is that that reference to, and interpretation of, Scripture is a lie perpetrated by the ignorant and/or the mendacious and/or the haters in the world!
I defy anyone to show me chapter and verse where same-sex love is condemned, or where same-sex marriage is condemned!
To resort to some Old Testament passages to support the specious argument that being Gay is destructive is terribly misleading, not only because Christians are not bound by the laws of the Old Testament, and that the context of these "clobber passages" are in the framework of a tribal society living on the edge that needed to propagate in order to survive, but that other cultural practices in ancient Israel are affirmed in the Bible that no sane person would currently adopt, such as stoning to death recalcitrant children, stoning to death those caught in adultery, and stoning to death those who work on the Sabbath. I'm not even going into such prohibitions listed in the Bible as the eating shell-fish and the wearing of mixed fibers in one's clothes!
More to the point, the attempt to "transform," or in any way suppress, that which God has made is a sin in and of itself!
Being Gay is "acquired" the same way that being Straight is "acquired!" God made us in these ways, and it is a sin to thwart God's plan for any of God's children, for to do so not only does inexplicable harm to that person, but also thwarts the will of God and shows a definite lack of trust in God and in God's plan for each person's life!
Even secular psychologists affirm the possible danger that accrues to those who are the victims of attempts to change their sexual orientation, and Christians should know enough to agree with that affirmation as well, even on purely biblical grounds. Our sexuality is a wonderful gift from God, and that is true whether we were created to be Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgender!
The love story of David and Jonathan (1Samuel 18-20), and the story of Deborah (Judges 4-5), a Judge and fierce and well-respected warrior in Israel whom I have always considered to be Transgender, shows that God mightily uses God's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender children for God's own purposes; God creates us the way God wants, and God doesn't make any mistakes!
For those who believe in "transforming" Gay people into something other than the way they were created to be by God is to show a decided lack of faith in God, and the Bible makes very clear that without faith it is impossible to please God! (See, for example, Hebrews 11:6.)
So, it is those who don't trust God and God's creative abilities, and who think that God makes mistakes, and who refuse to understand that God specializes in diversity, who are the real sinners!
And LGBT people who are comfortable in and with their own bodies, knowing that they are not some mistake, know that God created them just as God ordained from the foundation of the world (for example, see Ephesians 1:4), who are the ones who express their faith in God, and are thereby enabled to live the abundant life that Jesus promises all of us who abide in Him!
Please don't listen to ignorant wolves in sheep's clothing, be they clergy or not, who are seeking to thwart God's will for your life!
Put your full trust in God, and don't trust the rhetoric of others who may well have prejudices based upon unresolved sexual conflicts in their own lives, thereby trying with all their might to suppress in you what they are often trying to suppress in themselves!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
HOMOPHOBIA IS THE RESULT OF EMOTIONAL DEFICIENCIES
Last year I wrote an article that appeared in the online magazine, "Whosoever," that I'd like to reprint here:
In his book, "In Our Time," Eric Hoffer who was an excellent philosopher, was self-educated, blind for the first fifteen years of his life, and became a migrant worker and then a longshoreman, wrote the following: "In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes - courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: Where there is com-passion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless. Thus the survival of the species may well depend on the ability to foster a boundless capacity for compassion."
So many in the United States (and elsewhere) lack that essential emotion, "compassion," that will help ensure the survival of the species! Indeed, the hostility visited upon LGBT people is a very strong indicator in our time of that deficiency!
All sorts of rationalizations have been trotted out by the ignorant and/or hatefully homophobic to try and justify discrimination against LGBT people, ranging from "maintaining traditional family values" to linking Gay people with pedophiles to causing all sorts of societal calamities. The very irrationality of their arguments in favor of deprivation of civil rights to LGBT people both bespeaks lack of compassion as it bespeaks gullibility and/or lack of compassion of those who take their rhetoric seriously.
In his book, "The Passionate State of Mind And Other Aphorisms," Hoffer states: "Passions usually have their roots in that which is blemished, crippled, incomplete and insecure within us. The passionate attitude is less a response to stimuli from without than an emanation of an inner dissatisfaction. "A poignant dissatisfaction, whatever be its cause, is at bottom a dissatisfaction with ourselves. It is surprising how much hardship and humiliation a man will endure without bitterness when he has not the least doubt about his worth or when he is so integrated with others that he is not aware of a separate self."
And it is to this phenomenon every person who possesses both a critical intellect and the necessary emotion of "compassion" must turn to help understand why there are some homophobes who make their homophobia something like a career. So many spend an inordinate amount of time condemning God's LGBT children, and one must understand that their animus ultimately resides, not in the object of their hatred, but in their own psyches that betrays their blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, and insecurities.
After all, if someone is emotionally and sexually intact, why would there be a need for their obsessive condemnation of other consenting adults' emotional/sexual orientations?
How is same-sex marriage, for example, going to adversely affect anyone's heterosexual marriage? Is there anyone who can give a reasonable answer to that question?
Clearly, there can be no rational answer to that rhetorical question! If anything, same-sex marriage will enhance the institution of marriage! Indeed, increasing legitimacy will accrue to the institution of marriage the more people partake of its rights, privileges, and responsibilities. So, people who are genuinely concerned with the future of the institution of marriage should be working to minimize divorce and encourage same-sex couples who wish to make a lifetime commitment to each other to marry!
Yet, we have many religious (and secular) people who try and prevent same-sex couples from partaking of the very institution from which they benefit, thereby encouraging fornication as one of their prejudices' byproducts, and they even have the temerity to claim the right to discriminate in the name of God. So, would they have us believe that God would prefer fornication over marriage among Gay people?
Can they be that clueless that they could reasonably expect that Gay people can, should, and must lead celibate lives while only heterosexuals can and should fulfill one of human beings' most primal urges?
The irrationality of homophobic rhetoric shows a clear deficiency on the part of homophobes regarding their level of "compassion," as it does their clear dissatisfaction with their own lot in life! Why else spend such an inordinate amount of time thinking about and condemning the emotional/sexual lives of others?
Emotionally and sexually intact people aren't particularly concerned with the emotional and sexual lives of other adults! They are likely to have a "live and let live" approach to such matters!
However, when someone has an inordinate fascination with condemning others, that condemnation betrays an emotional deficiency that makes compassion very difficult, if not impossible, to have or sustain.
And if a Christian (or any other decent person) can be characterized by any one characteristic, that characteristic is "compassion!"
Christians are to be agents of God's grace in this world; we are to preach and live out the Gospel of grace, faith, love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness! And those who condemn others, those who seek to deprive others of civil rights, those who help create a climate of fear and hatred of others, have shown by their words and/or deeds that they are neither Christians nor even decent people!
We are to make no mistake: homophobes are absolutely no different in their mind-set and in their emotional deficiencies than were and are White Supremacists! Both groups partake of the need to discriminate and hate in order for the awareness of their own emotional deficiencies to be overridden by their condemnation of others!
"Condemnation" acts as an imperfect and temporary band-aid to help heal the haters' own emotional woundedness, a woundedness that they don't have the courage to bring themselves to face, confront, and overcome! So, they take the coward's way out and, rather than deal with "the beam in their own eye," they feel the need to manufacture a beam in a minority group whom they perceive it is safe to persecute.
And when that particular minority group is no longer considered safe to persecute, they will search for another minority group upon which to vent their anger, an anger borne of their own emotional deficiencies that they cloak in religious trappings, so that they can try and stake a claim on "godliness," "virtue" and "morality" when, in fact, their own rhetoric and actions show them to manifest the greatest form of ungodliness, lack of virtue, and immorality: the sin of pride in their oppression of others!
Jesus never condemned Gay people, but He sure spent quite a bit of time condemning the proud, the haughty, the legalists who condemned and discriminated against others and put yokes of bondage onto others, all the while claiming to impose those yokes in the name of God.
If haters didn't have an object to hate, they would be forced to confront their own emotional blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, insecurities, deficiencies and frailties. And that is the last thing a moral coward feels he/she can afford to do!
In his book, "In Our Time," Eric Hoffer who was an excellent philosopher, was self-educated, blind for the first fifteen years of his life, and became a migrant worker and then a longshoreman, wrote the following: "In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes - courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: Where there is com-passion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless. Thus the survival of the species may well depend on the ability to foster a boundless capacity for compassion."
So many in the United States (and elsewhere) lack that essential emotion, "compassion," that will help ensure the survival of the species! Indeed, the hostility visited upon LGBT people is a very strong indicator in our time of that deficiency!
All sorts of rationalizations have been trotted out by the ignorant and/or hatefully homophobic to try and justify discrimination against LGBT people, ranging from "maintaining traditional family values" to linking Gay people with pedophiles to causing all sorts of societal calamities. The very irrationality of their arguments in favor of deprivation of civil rights to LGBT people both bespeaks lack of compassion as it bespeaks gullibility and/or lack of compassion of those who take their rhetoric seriously.
In his book, "The Passionate State of Mind And Other Aphorisms," Hoffer states: "Passions usually have their roots in that which is blemished, crippled, incomplete and insecure within us. The passionate attitude is less a response to stimuli from without than an emanation of an inner dissatisfaction. "A poignant dissatisfaction, whatever be its cause, is at bottom a dissatisfaction with ourselves. It is surprising how much hardship and humiliation a man will endure without bitterness when he has not the least doubt about his worth or when he is so integrated with others that he is not aware of a separate self."
And it is to this phenomenon every person who possesses both a critical intellect and the necessary emotion of "compassion" must turn to help understand why there are some homophobes who make their homophobia something like a career. So many spend an inordinate amount of time condemning God's LGBT children, and one must understand that their animus ultimately resides, not in the object of their hatred, but in their own psyches that betrays their blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, and insecurities.
After all, if someone is emotionally and sexually intact, why would there be a need for their obsessive condemnation of other consenting adults' emotional/sexual orientations?
How is same-sex marriage, for example, going to adversely affect anyone's heterosexual marriage? Is there anyone who can give a reasonable answer to that question?
Clearly, there can be no rational answer to that rhetorical question! If anything, same-sex marriage will enhance the institution of marriage! Indeed, increasing legitimacy will accrue to the institution of marriage the more people partake of its rights, privileges, and responsibilities. So, people who are genuinely concerned with the future of the institution of marriage should be working to minimize divorce and encourage same-sex couples who wish to make a lifetime commitment to each other to marry!
Yet, we have many religious (and secular) people who try and prevent same-sex couples from partaking of the very institution from which they benefit, thereby encouraging fornication as one of their prejudices' byproducts, and they even have the temerity to claim the right to discriminate in the name of God. So, would they have us believe that God would prefer fornication over marriage among Gay people?
Can they be that clueless that they could reasonably expect that Gay people can, should, and must lead celibate lives while only heterosexuals can and should fulfill one of human beings' most primal urges?
The irrationality of homophobic rhetoric shows a clear deficiency on the part of homophobes regarding their level of "compassion," as it does their clear dissatisfaction with their own lot in life! Why else spend such an inordinate amount of time thinking about and condemning the emotional/sexual lives of others?
Emotionally and sexually intact people aren't particularly concerned with the emotional and sexual lives of other adults! They are likely to have a "live and let live" approach to such matters!
However, when someone has an inordinate fascination with condemning others, that condemnation betrays an emotional deficiency that makes compassion very difficult, if not impossible, to have or sustain.
And if a Christian (or any other decent person) can be characterized by any one characteristic, that characteristic is "compassion!"
Christians are to be agents of God's grace in this world; we are to preach and live out the Gospel of grace, faith, love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness! And those who condemn others, those who seek to deprive others of civil rights, those who help create a climate of fear and hatred of others, have shown by their words and/or deeds that they are neither Christians nor even decent people!
We are to make no mistake: homophobes are absolutely no different in their mind-set and in their emotional deficiencies than were and are White Supremacists! Both groups partake of the need to discriminate and hate in order for the awareness of their own emotional deficiencies to be overridden by their condemnation of others!
"Condemnation" acts as an imperfect and temporary band-aid to help heal the haters' own emotional woundedness, a woundedness that they don't have the courage to bring themselves to face, confront, and overcome! So, they take the coward's way out and, rather than deal with "the beam in their own eye," they feel the need to manufacture a beam in a minority group whom they perceive it is safe to persecute.
And when that particular minority group is no longer considered safe to persecute, they will search for another minority group upon which to vent their anger, an anger borne of their own emotional deficiencies that they cloak in religious trappings, so that they can try and stake a claim on "godliness," "virtue" and "morality" when, in fact, their own rhetoric and actions show them to manifest the greatest form of ungodliness, lack of virtue, and immorality: the sin of pride in their oppression of others!
Jesus never condemned Gay people, but He sure spent quite a bit of time condemning the proud, the haughty, the legalists who condemned and discriminated against others and put yokes of bondage onto others, all the while claiming to impose those yokes in the name of God.
If haters didn't have an object to hate, they would be forced to confront their own emotional blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, insecurities, deficiencies and frailties. And that is the last thing a moral coward feels he/she can afford to do!
Saturday, October 15, 2011
BEING GAY IS A GIFT FROM GOD
From now on, I'm going to sporadically post articles, urging you to please read prior posts and assorted articles in the Links Section of this blog.
The following is a slightly edited article that I am reprinting here:
Fortunately, in many communities there are gay affirming congregations. They understand the Gospel of inclusiveness that puts all of us in the same tent for worship and ministry.
To be able to love another person is a gift from God! As human beings we have the capacity to love another person, putting that other person's feelings and interests ahead of our own. This is agapao in the Greek and is the word Jesus uses when He commands His disciples to love others.
Yet, in addition to agapao, there is also eros and phileo. Eros is love based upon pleasure and phileo is love based upon reciprocity of feelings and actions. In other words, phileo occurs when one loves the other if that love is reciprocated and doesnít love the other when that love is not reciprocated. Most of the world operates on eros and phileo! Christians are called upon to exercise agapao!
However, in our intimate relations, eros is also very important! It is the bonding of two souls and bodies in love that is faithful and enduring. The Gay couple well understands this bonding!
Troy Perry was a Pentecostal-Baptist minister at a very young age. He knew he was gay and tried to smother his feelings. He even attempted suicide! Fortunately, he was found after slashing his wrists, taken to a hospital and survived. He then realized that God doesn't create someone whom He can sit around and hate. God created Troy Perry, just like He created all of His gay and lesbian children! Troy Perry went on to start the Metropolitan Community Churches which particularly ministers to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. They are world wide and have an Internet site.
The Bible doesn't condemn same-sex love! In a previous article I wrote in the "Sacramento Valley Mirror" in which I have a weekly column entitled, "Christianity and Society," I elucidated the passages traditionally used to condemn gay people and showed that they dealt in a context of the need to propagate, with idolatry and exploitation, as well as with acts against nature where heterosexuals engage in homosexual acts undoubtedly to various pagan deities. Nowhere in the Bible is same-sex committed love condemned or even discussed!
The last bastion of the civil rights movement is the stigma and exclusion of gay people from our churches and from our secular society. Yet, they can be seen to be a gift to us from God in that, despite their terrible persecution, many remain steadfast in their loving relationships. Despite all of the barriers set up by Christians and non-Christians alike, many remain in committed relationships.
Being constitutionally gay is not a disorder any more than having brown eyes is a disorder! Most gay people have been born that way and like the old Sunday School saying goes, "God doesn't create junk."
If you're gay, you have been blessed by God in that you are capable of loving another human being. The most dangerous people in the world are those who either have nothing to lose or who are incapable of loving others. There is no reason not to assume that God blesses the monogamous gay couple every bit as much as He blesses the heterosexually married couple!
As Jesus said to the Scribes and Pharisees, we make void the Word of God by our traditions (Matthew 15:3,6,9) Mere fallible human beings interpreted the Bible to condemn same-sex unions! Mere human beings call being gay an "affliction" and gay sex as "intrinsically evil."
When done in a context of monogamous mutual love, the Bible doesn't affirm or condemn homosexuality. Indeed, the Bible is silent on this matter!
Many gay people walk around with guilt and shame because they think that they are condemned before God and their fellow man. Read the Bible with new eyes, taking account of the most recent biblical scholarship (See, for example, The New Oxford Annotated Bible), and see for yourself that God created you just as you are and He affirms and loves you just as you are. God shows far more grace than do mere human beings!
If you're gay, you have been given the gift of the capacity to love by God, your creator. Don't take that gift lightly and donít deny it as a gift from God.
You have the capacity to love another human being, and nothing is more sacred or godly than that.
The following is a slightly edited article that I am reprinting here:
Fortunately, in many communities there are gay affirming congregations. They understand the Gospel of inclusiveness that puts all of us in the same tent for worship and ministry.
To be able to love another person is a gift from God! As human beings we have the capacity to love another person, putting that other person's feelings and interests ahead of our own. This is agapao in the Greek and is the word Jesus uses when He commands His disciples to love others.
Yet, in addition to agapao, there is also eros and phileo. Eros is love based upon pleasure and phileo is love based upon reciprocity of feelings and actions. In other words, phileo occurs when one loves the other if that love is reciprocated and doesnít love the other when that love is not reciprocated. Most of the world operates on eros and phileo! Christians are called upon to exercise agapao!
However, in our intimate relations, eros is also very important! It is the bonding of two souls and bodies in love that is faithful and enduring. The Gay couple well understands this bonding!
Troy Perry was a Pentecostal-Baptist minister at a very young age. He knew he was gay and tried to smother his feelings. He even attempted suicide! Fortunately, he was found after slashing his wrists, taken to a hospital and survived. He then realized that God doesn't create someone whom He can sit around and hate. God created Troy Perry, just like He created all of His gay and lesbian children! Troy Perry went on to start the Metropolitan Community Churches which particularly ministers to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities. They are world wide and have an Internet site.
The Bible doesn't condemn same-sex love! In a previous article I wrote in the "Sacramento Valley Mirror" in which I have a weekly column entitled, "Christianity and Society," I elucidated the passages traditionally used to condemn gay people and showed that they dealt in a context of the need to propagate, with idolatry and exploitation, as well as with acts against nature where heterosexuals engage in homosexual acts undoubtedly to various pagan deities. Nowhere in the Bible is same-sex committed love condemned or even discussed!
The last bastion of the civil rights movement is the stigma and exclusion of gay people from our churches and from our secular society. Yet, they can be seen to be a gift to us from God in that, despite their terrible persecution, many remain steadfast in their loving relationships. Despite all of the barriers set up by Christians and non-Christians alike, many remain in committed relationships.
Being constitutionally gay is not a disorder any more than having brown eyes is a disorder! Most gay people have been born that way and like the old Sunday School saying goes, "God doesn't create junk."
If you're gay, you have been blessed by God in that you are capable of loving another human being. The most dangerous people in the world are those who either have nothing to lose or who are incapable of loving others. There is no reason not to assume that God blesses the monogamous gay couple every bit as much as He blesses the heterosexually married couple!
As Jesus said to the Scribes and Pharisees, we make void the Word of God by our traditions (Matthew 15:3,6,9) Mere fallible human beings interpreted the Bible to condemn same-sex unions! Mere human beings call being gay an "affliction" and gay sex as "intrinsically evil."
When done in a context of monogamous mutual love, the Bible doesn't affirm or condemn homosexuality. Indeed, the Bible is silent on this matter!
Many gay people walk around with guilt and shame because they think that they are condemned before God and their fellow man. Read the Bible with new eyes, taking account of the most recent biblical scholarship (See, for example, The New Oxford Annotated Bible), and see for yourself that God created you just as you are and He affirms and loves you just as you are. God shows far more grace than do mere human beings!
If you're gay, you have been given the gift of the capacity to love by God, your creator. Don't take that gift lightly and donít deny it as a gift from God.
You have the capacity to love another human being, and nothing is more sacred or godly than that.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
ON THE NEED TO GROW UP:THE BETRAYAL OF THE LGBT CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
The following post is an edited version of the one I wrote about three years ago, and I think it is at least as relevant today as it was at that time:
As I've written before, I would have my class think of the first word that occurred to them when I said the word "Gay." All of them said that the first thing that occurred to them was the word "sex."
As I told them, let's assume that the average couple has sex three times a week, each session lasting about 15 minutes. That means that only about 45 minutes a week is devoted to sexual activity. Clearly all of us, Gay or Straight, are awake for far more than 45 minutes a week. All of our lives encompass far more than the engaging in sexual activity!
Being Gay, just like being Straight, is about one's whole being: his/her perceptions, sensibilities, and emotional/affectional/sexual preferences. We are all multifaceted, and to restrict oneself or others to being a mere one-dimensional sexual animal does a grave injustice to both logic as well as to Gay people themselves.
The unfortunate fact is that many Gay people, too, have bought into the false notion, inculcated by religious and secular homophobes, their very oppressors, that they are merely sexual beings who are mere "selfish hedonists", and who then, therefore, portray themselves, and view themselves, as just that: one-dimensional people who focus on sexual activity, and who define themselves by their sexuality and by little or nothing else.
Moreover, the appropriation and use of pejorative and hateful epithets as self-identifiers, as well as the public engagement in frivolous activities that also mark one as an "outsider," as a "deviant," as "the other," and even as "the enemy" to what is considered to be "normal" and "moral," tells us far more about the given person than it tells us about anything else.
Indeed, it seems to me that many Gay people revel in their being categorized as sexual outlaws, and are quite content to be treated as second class citizens so that they can enhance in-group solidarity and define themselves largely, if not solely, in sexual terms. It must be acknowledged that these people, often mere publicity seekers, are witting or unwitting traitors to the struggle for full and equal civil rights for LGBT people!
For example, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being into BDSM or being a member of the Leather community, but the blatant hostility of the Folsom Street Fair of a few years ago (mocking the Last Supper and parading around with whips and chains), and other such frivolous and hedonistic displays that can often be seen in Pride Parades, are consciously and/or unconsciously designed to keep LGBT people in their place of being viewed by most of society as justifiable victims to persecute; reinforce LGBT people in taking pride in being in an "outsider" status, as "sexual outlaws," who have no desire to be part of mainstream society.
These frivolous and hedonistic displays are done by conscious and/or unconscious design! They seem to me to be far less a celebration of the Leather community, or other aspects of Gay communities, than they are statements telling others, particularly religious people, "F***k You." Indeed, these displays stick a finger in the eye of potential Straight allies who are desperately needed to assure equality for LGBT people!
One can blame centuries of discrimination for the unconscious and/or conscious self-loathing that prompts the appropriation of the hateful epithets used by the oppressor by which many LGBT people publicly (and, undoubtedly, privately) identify themselves, such as "Queer," "Dyke," "Fag," and the like, and the sexualization of the self as the major component of one's very being that is held by many LGBT people, but that explanation only goes so far, and gives such LGBT people too much slack when any of us put the onus of the source of self-hate solely on those who discriminate against the oppressed.
There is a point when one has to own his/her dignity, demand the respect due to any human being, demand full and equal civil and sacramental rights regardless of the negative messages and hostility that have been visited on that person in the past, or even in the present. And those goals will not be realized as long as the minority group accepts its inferior status, and revels in it by referring to its members by the very same terms used by the most virulent homophobes throughout history and in our midst.
No self respecting person, Gay or Straight, stands for being treated as less than fully human; no self respecting person, Gay or Straight, uses negative self-identifiers that have been historically (and contemporarily) used by their oppressors. The slave mentality is blamed on others, but the fact is that it ultimately resides within each human being whether or not to accept that mentality.
I have yet to hear any Jewish person refer to him/herself or other Jewish person as a "Kike!" Can you imagine the revulsion and outrage that would occur if any university in the world had a course, program, minor, or major in "Kike Studies?"
Yet, when it comes to LGBT people, it is viewed as perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged, for those very same universities to have courses in "Queer Studies." The difference?: Most Jewish people possess a sense of dignity and demand the same respect given to any other group of people, and that difference makes all the difference in determining the fate of achieving the goal of full and equal civil and sacramental rights for LGBT people!
On one progressive, LGBT-oriented site, Don Charles and I tried to convince others of the fact that hateful epithets used as self-identifiers by LGBT people was inimical to the achievement of equality. It was remarkable how the venom against our contentions (and often against us) started pouring out from most of those who chose to comment. Deep down, I'm convinced that most of those who wrote negative comments knew that we were right, but they didn't have the insight or the guts to overcome and transcend the big lie that they deserve to be treated as second-class citizens.
They really believe that they are "sinners," regardless of whether or not they are religious and, in the case of those who had that message constantly reinforced by "ex-gay therapists," it may well have insinuated itself in their unconscious that drives them to continuous, life-long self hate. With psyches like these, there can be no meaningful activism.
When we throw into the mix political expediency, as seen, for example, with Barney Frank and the ENDA debacle, where a few years ago he agreed to remove transgender people (later agreeing to their inclusion when there was a lot of revulsion expressed against him for his stance) from its protections; being grateful for the crumbs of incrementalism, such as being content with "civil unions" rather than "marriage," in the name of "progress"; "liberals" who go whichever way the wind is blowing; inertia where people are self-satisfied if they perceive their immediate needs are being met, their world is not in any way rocked, and they are left alone to live their lives as second class citizens, regardless of the cost to their dignity and humanity, meaningful activism falls on deaf ears.
Moreover, such psyches and political anemia only serve to further embolden the homophobes, as they see these factors as signs of weakness, and the tragic conclusion is that they are right about that perception. Using the oppressor's hateful epithets as self-identifiers, epithets that are often the last words LGBT murder victims hear when they are being killed because of their gender status and/or affectional/sexual orientation, merely emboldens homophobes and reinforces the negative stereotypes that all too many Straight people have regarding LGBT people.
So, I say to those who revel in using pejorative and hateful self-identifiers; who sexualize their defining identities for public consumption; who are content with being treated as second-class citizens; who are delighted with crumbs of incrementalism; who are self-satisfied as long as their immediate perceived self-interests are being met; who tolerate the indignities attendant upon being treated as "the other," and "the deviant"; who allow homophobic clergy and others to demean them with impunity: Grow Up!
When we were children we usually, and for some of us all too frequently, allowed adults to define our realities for us. Now that we're grown, we have an obligation to act our ages and demand to be treated with the same dignity and have the same civil and sacramental rights as anyone else! And not settle for anything less!
Listen to the Apostle Paul: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (1Corinthians 13:11)
To the degree that we act like children, either by centering our lives on frivolous and self-destructive activities, or by allowing others to define our realities for us, or by not demanding full and equal civil and sacramental rights, or by using negative and hostile self-identifiers that serve to perpetuate "outsider," "deviant," "abnormal," and "inferior" status, it is to that degree that homophobes are further emboldened; what rights that are currently enjoyed are threatened or may even be rescinded, especially after the 2012 elections; increasing numbers of otherwise decent people will find "justification" for considering LGBT people as "not one of us," and the fight for full and equal civil and sacramental rights will be greatly harmed, if not retarded.
Moreover, such harmful behaviors and self-concepts are inimical to the fire in the belly that is needed to acquire the dignity and civil and sacramental rights that are enjoyed by all other citizens in the U.S.
As I've written before, I would have my class think of the first word that occurred to them when I said the word "Gay." All of them said that the first thing that occurred to them was the word "sex."
As I told them, let's assume that the average couple has sex three times a week, each session lasting about 15 minutes. That means that only about 45 minutes a week is devoted to sexual activity. Clearly all of us, Gay or Straight, are awake for far more than 45 minutes a week. All of our lives encompass far more than the engaging in sexual activity!
Being Gay, just like being Straight, is about one's whole being: his/her perceptions, sensibilities, and emotional/affectional/sexual preferences. We are all multifaceted, and to restrict oneself or others to being a mere one-dimensional sexual animal does a grave injustice to both logic as well as to Gay people themselves.
The unfortunate fact is that many Gay people, too, have bought into the false notion, inculcated by religious and secular homophobes, their very oppressors, that they are merely sexual beings who are mere "selfish hedonists", and who then, therefore, portray themselves, and view themselves, as just that: one-dimensional people who focus on sexual activity, and who define themselves by their sexuality and by little or nothing else.
Moreover, the appropriation and use of pejorative and hateful epithets as self-identifiers, as well as the public engagement in frivolous activities that also mark one as an "outsider," as a "deviant," as "the other," and even as "the enemy" to what is considered to be "normal" and "moral," tells us far more about the given person than it tells us about anything else.
Indeed, it seems to me that many Gay people revel in their being categorized as sexual outlaws, and are quite content to be treated as second class citizens so that they can enhance in-group solidarity and define themselves largely, if not solely, in sexual terms. It must be acknowledged that these people, often mere publicity seekers, are witting or unwitting traitors to the struggle for full and equal civil rights for LGBT people!
For example, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being into BDSM or being a member of the Leather community, but the blatant hostility of the Folsom Street Fair of a few years ago (mocking the Last Supper and parading around with whips and chains), and other such frivolous and hedonistic displays that can often be seen in Pride Parades, are consciously and/or unconsciously designed to keep LGBT people in their place of being viewed by most of society as justifiable victims to persecute; reinforce LGBT people in taking pride in being in an "outsider" status, as "sexual outlaws," who have no desire to be part of mainstream society.
These frivolous and hedonistic displays are done by conscious and/or unconscious design! They seem to me to be far less a celebration of the Leather community, or other aspects of Gay communities, than they are statements telling others, particularly religious people, "F***k You." Indeed, these displays stick a finger in the eye of potential Straight allies who are desperately needed to assure equality for LGBT people!
One can blame centuries of discrimination for the unconscious and/or conscious self-loathing that prompts the appropriation of the hateful epithets used by the oppressor by which many LGBT people publicly (and, undoubtedly, privately) identify themselves, such as "Queer," "Dyke," "Fag," and the like, and the sexualization of the self as the major component of one's very being that is held by many LGBT people, but that explanation only goes so far, and gives such LGBT people too much slack when any of us put the onus of the source of self-hate solely on those who discriminate against the oppressed.
There is a point when one has to own his/her dignity, demand the respect due to any human being, demand full and equal civil and sacramental rights regardless of the negative messages and hostility that have been visited on that person in the past, or even in the present. And those goals will not be realized as long as the minority group accepts its inferior status, and revels in it by referring to its members by the very same terms used by the most virulent homophobes throughout history and in our midst.
No self respecting person, Gay or Straight, stands for being treated as less than fully human; no self respecting person, Gay or Straight, uses negative self-identifiers that have been historically (and contemporarily) used by their oppressors. The slave mentality is blamed on others, but the fact is that it ultimately resides within each human being whether or not to accept that mentality.
I have yet to hear any Jewish person refer to him/herself or other Jewish person as a "Kike!" Can you imagine the revulsion and outrage that would occur if any university in the world had a course, program, minor, or major in "Kike Studies?"
Yet, when it comes to LGBT people, it is viewed as perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged, for those very same universities to have courses in "Queer Studies." The difference?: Most Jewish people possess a sense of dignity and demand the same respect given to any other group of people, and that difference makes all the difference in determining the fate of achieving the goal of full and equal civil and sacramental rights for LGBT people!
On one progressive, LGBT-oriented site, Don Charles and I tried to convince others of the fact that hateful epithets used as self-identifiers by LGBT people was inimical to the achievement of equality. It was remarkable how the venom against our contentions (and often against us) started pouring out from most of those who chose to comment. Deep down, I'm convinced that most of those who wrote negative comments knew that we were right, but they didn't have the insight or the guts to overcome and transcend the big lie that they deserve to be treated as second-class citizens.
They really believe that they are "sinners," regardless of whether or not they are religious and, in the case of those who had that message constantly reinforced by "ex-gay therapists," it may well have insinuated itself in their unconscious that drives them to continuous, life-long self hate. With psyches like these, there can be no meaningful activism.
When we throw into the mix political expediency, as seen, for example, with Barney Frank and the ENDA debacle, where a few years ago he agreed to remove transgender people (later agreeing to their inclusion when there was a lot of revulsion expressed against him for his stance) from its protections; being grateful for the crumbs of incrementalism, such as being content with "civil unions" rather than "marriage," in the name of "progress"; "liberals" who go whichever way the wind is blowing; inertia where people are self-satisfied if they perceive their immediate needs are being met, their world is not in any way rocked, and they are left alone to live their lives as second class citizens, regardless of the cost to their dignity and humanity, meaningful activism falls on deaf ears.
Moreover, such psyches and political anemia only serve to further embolden the homophobes, as they see these factors as signs of weakness, and the tragic conclusion is that they are right about that perception. Using the oppressor's hateful epithets as self-identifiers, epithets that are often the last words LGBT murder victims hear when they are being killed because of their gender status and/or affectional/sexual orientation, merely emboldens homophobes and reinforces the negative stereotypes that all too many Straight people have regarding LGBT people.
So, I say to those who revel in using pejorative and hateful self-identifiers; who sexualize their defining identities for public consumption; who are content with being treated as second-class citizens; who are delighted with crumbs of incrementalism; who are self-satisfied as long as their immediate perceived self-interests are being met; who tolerate the indignities attendant upon being treated as "the other," and "the deviant"; who allow homophobic clergy and others to demean them with impunity: Grow Up!
When we were children we usually, and for some of us all too frequently, allowed adults to define our realities for us. Now that we're grown, we have an obligation to act our ages and demand to be treated with the same dignity and have the same civil and sacramental rights as anyone else! And not settle for anything less!
Listen to the Apostle Paul: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (1Corinthians 13:11)
To the degree that we act like children, either by centering our lives on frivolous and self-destructive activities, or by allowing others to define our realities for us, or by not demanding full and equal civil and sacramental rights, or by using negative and hostile self-identifiers that serve to perpetuate "outsider," "deviant," "abnormal," and "inferior" status, it is to that degree that homophobes are further emboldened; what rights that are currently enjoyed are threatened or may even be rescinded, especially after the 2012 elections; increasing numbers of otherwise decent people will find "justification" for considering LGBT people as "not one of us," and the fight for full and equal civil and sacramental rights will be greatly harmed, if not retarded.
Moreover, such harmful behaviors and self-concepts are inimical to the fire in the belly that is needed to acquire the dignity and civil and sacramental rights that are enjoyed by all other citizens in the U.S.
Monday, September 12, 2011
INSTITUTIONAL SOCIOPATHY: THE DECLINE OF AMERICA
The following slightly edited article first appeared in my weekly newspaper column entitled, "Christianity and Society," that appears in the "Sacramento Valley Mirror":
O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. (Isaiah 3:12)
Such statements as the above verse of Scripture show why very few prophets of God ever died in their sleep! Tradition has it that Isaiah was sawn in two for warning Judah about God’s wrath in the form of the Babylonian takeover and the subsequent exile of the people of Judah.
A sociopath has certain characteristics, some of which are glibness/superficial charm; grandiose sense of self-worth; pathological lying; conning/manipulative behavior; lack of remorse or guilt; shallow feelings; callousness/lack of empathy with others; failure to accept responsibility for his or her own actions. Most of our politicians and corporate heads clearly meet most or all of these criteria!
We now have a situation in our nation where those who presume to lead cause others to err and destroy their paths; indeed, they even compromise the state of their very souls. Be they Democrats or Republicans, our political leaders are largely sociopathic! They care far more for their short-sited self-interests than for the good of the country, despite their lofty rhetoric to the contrary.
Especially after the Bush debacle, it is inconceivable to me that we would have a Tea Party were it not for the fact that we have a Black President! The Tea Party and the Republicans who mimic its rhetoric seem to care little for the underprivileged and working classes in the U.S., and that mind-set seems to ironically be shared by Obama whose rhetoric belies his tremendous inadequacies and moral cowardice in dealing with issues, such as universal health care, that were central to the campaign that won him election to that lofty office.
Just as the Tea Party under the Republican rubric is betraying most of the American people, Obama is also betraying most of the American people by his betrayal of the base that ushered him into office; his acquiescence to the corporate elites that have a vested interest in cushy tax-breaks and deregulation of their activities that largely work against the best interests of most of the American people.
“Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.” (Jeremiah 22:3) Those who blame illegal immigrants, Gay people, and unions for their assorted woes, rather than the political and corporate elites, should read this verse of Scripture more than once!
We have a far-flung military presence, and we are officially engaged in two wars, and have orchestrated and/or supported, and are supporting, the toppling of governments elsewhere. We were founded by virtual genocide of Native Americans, and have a history of slavery and horrific segregation and treatment of African Americans. Professing Christians and others have brutally maligned God's LGBT people; bearing false witness against them. We have engaged in torture to the extent that George Bush and Dick Cheney will unlikely ever go to Europe for fear of being arrested for war crimes; Obama might well be following in their footsteps in this regard. We are the only developed country that doesn’t have universal health care, and there are people who remain sick, in pain, and die because of lack of access. Yet, we unashamedly sing, “God Bless America.”
As Rev. Jeremiah Wright accurately said, God will not bless America! Indeed, God will damn America for its institutionalized sociopathy (in which it is certainly not alone) that has consigned the promise of America’s founding to the dung heap of naked greed and its sociopathy in dealing with the vulnerable in our society and with those who have stood in the way of its naked capitalism and militarism. And we currently have political and corporate reactionaries that are in league with the Power Elite having spokesmen on talk radio who extol such sociopathy as a virtue! And their falsely conscious listeners greedily lap up this largely sociopathic rhetoric!
And this sociopathic behavior is not by any means restricted to most politicians and corporate heads! Most talk radio is filled with hosts who play to the lowest common denominator and engage in class warfare, all the while denying the existence of that class warfare, and blaming the objects of their disapproval of manufacturing the existence of that class warfare that they, themselves, are helping to enhance!
And, to add insult to injury, the false consciousness of most of their listeners has them believing that these talk show hosts who make multimillion dollars a year catering to the fears and discontent of their listeners, have their listeners’ economic interests at heart. And these listeners, ironically, often identify with the interests of these hosts and their rhetoric which, objectively speaking, are largely antithetical to the very economic interests of the listeners, but whose rhetoric belies this fact.
We have become an increasingly sociopathic society that has seriously coarsened our discourse and our very culture! And a stark tragedy that helps fuel this sociopathy is the active or tacit encouragement of most of the institutional church in the face of such gross injustices, whether it be by its rhetoric or by its silence.
In the case of most of the institutional Church's homophobic rhetoric (or silence amidst homophobic rhetoric) toward LGBT people, most of their clergy have blood on their hands by directly and indirectly having contributed to the suicides, assaults, and murders of Gay people. The consignment of Gay people to pariah status is due in no small part to the role of most clergy in seeking to deny Gay people both civil and sacramental rights; erroneously and sinfully defining them as "immoral" and "disordered" when, in fact, it is these homophobic clergy who are the immoral and disordered ones; who bear false witness (a violation of one of the Ten Commandments) against those whom God created just as God designed from the foundation of the world and whom God loves like crazy.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!” (Isaiah 5:20-23)
O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. (Isaiah 3:12)
Such statements as the above verse of Scripture show why very few prophets of God ever died in their sleep! Tradition has it that Isaiah was sawn in two for warning Judah about God’s wrath in the form of the Babylonian takeover and the subsequent exile of the people of Judah.
A sociopath has certain characteristics, some of which are glibness/superficial charm; grandiose sense of self-worth; pathological lying; conning/manipulative behavior; lack of remorse or guilt; shallow feelings; callousness/lack of empathy with others; failure to accept responsibility for his or her own actions. Most of our politicians and corporate heads clearly meet most or all of these criteria!
We now have a situation in our nation where those who presume to lead cause others to err and destroy their paths; indeed, they even compromise the state of their very souls. Be they Democrats or Republicans, our political leaders are largely sociopathic! They care far more for their short-sited self-interests than for the good of the country, despite their lofty rhetoric to the contrary.
Especially after the Bush debacle, it is inconceivable to me that we would have a Tea Party were it not for the fact that we have a Black President! The Tea Party and the Republicans who mimic its rhetoric seem to care little for the underprivileged and working classes in the U.S., and that mind-set seems to ironically be shared by Obama whose rhetoric belies his tremendous inadequacies and moral cowardice in dealing with issues, such as universal health care, that were central to the campaign that won him election to that lofty office.
Just as the Tea Party under the Republican rubric is betraying most of the American people, Obama is also betraying most of the American people by his betrayal of the base that ushered him into office; his acquiescence to the corporate elites that have a vested interest in cushy tax-breaks and deregulation of their activities that largely work against the best interests of most of the American people.
“Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.” (Jeremiah 22:3) Those who blame illegal immigrants, Gay people, and unions for their assorted woes, rather than the political and corporate elites, should read this verse of Scripture more than once!
We have a far-flung military presence, and we are officially engaged in two wars, and have orchestrated and/or supported, and are supporting, the toppling of governments elsewhere. We were founded by virtual genocide of Native Americans, and have a history of slavery and horrific segregation and treatment of African Americans. Professing Christians and others have brutally maligned God's LGBT people; bearing false witness against them. We have engaged in torture to the extent that George Bush and Dick Cheney will unlikely ever go to Europe for fear of being arrested for war crimes; Obama might well be following in their footsteps in this regard. We are the only developed country that doesn’t have universal health care, and there are people who remain sick, in pain, and die because of lack of access. Yet, we unashamedly sing, “God Bless America.”
As Rev. Jeremiah Wright accurately said, God will not bless America! Indeed, God will damn America for its institutionalized sociopathy (in which it is certainly not alone) that has consigned the promise of America’s founding to the dung heap of naked greed and its sociopathy in dealing with the vulnerable in our society and with those who have stood in the way of its naked capitalism and militarism. And we currently have political and corporate reactionaries that are in league with the Power Elite having spokesmen on talk radio who extol such sociopathy as a virtue! And their falsely conscious listeners greedily lap up this largely sociopathic rhetoric!
And this sociopathic behavior is not by any means restricted to most politicians and corporate heads! Most talk radio is filled with hosts who play to the lowest common denominator and engage in class warfare, all the while denying the existence of that class warfare, and blaming the objects of their disapproval of manufacturing the existence of that class warfare that they, themselves, are helping to enhance!
And, to add insult to injury, the false consciousness of most of their listeners has them believing that these talk show hosts who make multimillion dollars a year catering to the fears and discontent of their listeners, have their listeners’ economic interests at heart. And these listeners, ironically, often identify with the interests of these hosts and their rhetoric which, objectively speaking, are largely antithetical to the very economic interests of the listeners, but whose rhetoric belies this fact.
We have become an increasingly sociopathic society that has seriously coarsened our discourse and our very culture! And a stark tragedy that helps fuel this sociopathy is the active or tacit encouragement of most of the institutional church in the face of such gross injustices, whether it be by its rhetoric or by its silence.
In the case of most of the institutional Church's homophobic rhetoric (or silence amidst homophobic rhetoric) toward LGBT people, most of their clergy have blood on their hands by directly and indirectly having contributed to the suicides, assaults, and murders of Gay people. The consignment of Gay people to pariah status is due in no small part to the role of most clergy in seeking to deny Gay people both civil and sacramental rights; erroneously and sinfully defining them as "immoral" and "disordered" when, in fact, it is these homophobic clergy who are the immoral and disordered ones; who bear false witness (a violation of one of the Ten Commandments) against those whom God created just as God designed from the foundation of the world and whom God loves like crazy.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!” (Isaiah 5:20-23)
Monday, September 5, 2011
THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH IN AMERICA
The following is a slightly edited article that appears in my column, "Christianity and Society," in the "Sacramento Valley Mirror" and that appears in the latest issue of "Whosoever":
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. (Haggai 1:6)
You'll notice I entitled this article, "The Institutional Church in America," rather than "Christianity in America, as there is a world of difference between "churchgoers" and "Christians"; between "the religious" and "the spiritual." Of course, there is some degree of overlap between the two, but it is my perception that that degree of overlap does not go anywhere near to approaching 100%.
The institutional Church and its enmeshment with Americanism, patriotism, jingoism, militarism, and capitalism can not be underestimated, as can be seen when an atheist and/or socialist has no chance of becoming a viable presidential candidate; when candidates for political office must be seen going to church. Their spiritual lives are irrelevant, as can be seen when Ronald and Nancy Reagan allegedly consulted psychics to determine assorted decisions, but they had to be seen attending church to be considered "Christians."
To add insult to injury, most of the institutional Church not only doesn't speak to crucial spiritually involved human rights issues of the day, but usually acts as an apologist for the power elite that frames the arguments and parameters of our perceptions of those crucial issues that are thereby serving to diminish the civil rights and civil liberties of most people in society, particularly those in the lower and middle classes.
As Christians, we are not to side with the "elites" but with the "rebels" who seek to make this a better world, a world, to use St. Augustine's words, that should be "a colony of heaven." And disciples of Christ are to be those rebels who seek to institutionalize godly virtues, and fulfill Jesus' two great Commandments to all who would be His disciples: the love of God and the love of one's fellow human beings.
In his superb book, "Death of the Liberal Class," Chris Hedges speaks to this inherent conflict between the elites and the rebels: "The elites and their courtiers in the liberal class always condemn the rebel as impractical. They dismiss the stance of the rebel as counterproductive. They chastise the rebel for being angry. The elites and their apologists call for calm, reason, and patience. They use the hypocritical language of compromise, generosity, and understanding to argue that we must accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to compromise…The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage—anger at the way things are and the courage to change them. The rebel knows that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion justifies itself." (p. 215)
And disciples of Christ are to be rebels against the demonic and all forces that pit the elites against the have-nots! And the elites who fervently seek after power, prestige, and wealth are often those very people who attain and maintain those goals by use of assorted nefarious, if not demonic, forces.
Moreover, the elites frame the perceptions of most people so that "…the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred." (Hosea 9:7b) And the hatred, the contempt, the sinfully laissez faire attitude of so many toward the poor, the sick, and the needy in our society is both palpably obvious and palpably obscene.
And where is the Church in America amidst all this unrighteousness? It is all too often the major apologist for all of this unrighteousness, or else it remains silent amidst this unrighteousness!
How is the institutional Church in America addressing our military intervention in all too many countries; our precipitous economic decline; the duplicity of most politicians; the dumbing down of higher education; the multi-millions of dollars that are spent buying people's votes; the political rhetoric that seeks to deny medical care to others; its being in the vanguard of discriminating against our Gay brothers and sisters? The answer is that it is often in cahoots with the power elite by being its apologist either through its rhetoric, its silence, or through its insipid rhetoric that shows its pathetic irrelevance.
Most of the institutional Church does not speak to the needs of people, especially the have-nots in society! When was the last time we heard from the institutional Church that there must be universal health care for people; we must not engage in so many of the wars in which we are currently engaged; we must build shelters for homeless people; we must put the needs of American workers before the desire to export jobs to other countries; we must embrace God's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children?
The institutional Church is both dangerous and pathetically irrelevant! Notice its absence by Hedges from the list of disciplines and institutions that can be instrumental in helping to hold back the destructive tide emanating from the power elite: "We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. As those who retained their identity during slavery or the long night of twentieth-century fascism and communism discovered, resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance. Music, theater, art, poetry, journalism, literature, dance, and the humanities, including the study of philosophy and history, will be the bulwarks that separate those who remain human from those who become savages." (p. 196)
As it currently exists, the structures and functions of most of the institutional Church consigns it either to alignment with the enemies of the desires of God's heart or to complete irrelevance!
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. (Haggai 1:6)
You'll notice I entitled this article, "The Institutional Church in America," rather than "Christianity in America, as there is a world of difference between "churchgoers" and "Christians"; between "the religious" and "the spiritual." Of course, there is some degree of overlap between the two, but it is my perception that that degree of overlap does not go anywhere near to approaching 100%.
The institutional Church and its enmeshment with Americanism, patriotism, jingoism, militarism, and capitalism can not be underestimated, as can be seen when an atheist and/or socialist has no chance of becoming a viable presidential candidate; when candidates for political office must be seen going to church. Their spiritual lives are irrelevant, as can be seen when Ronald and Nancy Reagan allegedly consulted psychics to determine assorted decisions, but they had to be seen attending church to be considered "Christians."
To add insult to injury, most of the institutional Church not only doesn't speak to crucial spiritually involved human rights issues of the day, but usually acts as an apologist for the power elite that frames the arguments and parameters of our perceptions of those crucial issues that are thereby serving to diminish the civil rights and civil liberties of most people in society, particularly those in the lower and middle classes.
As Christians, we are not to side with the "elites" but with the "rebels" who seek to make this a better world, a world, to use St. Augustine's words, that should be "a colony of heaven." And disciples of Christ are to be those rebels who seek to institutionalize godly virtues, and fulfill Jesus' two great Commandments to all who would be His disciples: the love of God and the love of one's fellow human beings.
In his superb book, "Death of the Liberal Class," Chris Hedges speaks to this inherent conflict between the elites and the rebels: "The elites and their courtiers in the liberal class always condemn the rebel as impractical. They dismiss the stance of the rebel as counterproductive. They chastise the rebel for being angry. The elites and their apologists call for calm, reason, and patience. They use the hypocritical language of compromise, generosity, and understanding to argue that we must accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to compromise…The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage—anger at the way things are and the courage to change them. The rebel knows that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion justifies itself." (p. 215)
And disciples of Christ are to be rebels against the demonic and all forces that pit the elites against the have-nots! And the elites who fervently seek after power, prestige, and wealth are often those very people who attain and maintain those goals by use of assorted nefarious, if not demonic, forces.
Moreover, the elites frame the perceptions of most people so that "…the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred." (Hosea 9:7b) And the hatred, the contempt, the sinfully laissez faire attitude of so many toward the poor, the sick, and the needy in our society is both palpably obvious and palpably obscene.
And where is the Church in America amidst all this unrighteousness? It is all too often the major apologist for all of this unrighteousness, or else it remains silent amidst this unrighteousness!
How is the institutional Church in America addressing our military intervention in all too many countries; our precipitous economic decline; the duplicity of most politicians; the dumbing down of higher education; the multi-millions of dollars that are spent buying people's votes; the political rhetoric that seeks to deny medical care to others; its being in the vanguard of discriminating against our Gay brothers and sisters? The answer is that it is often in cahoots with the power elite by being its apologist either through its rhetoric, its silence, or through its insipid rhetoric that shows its pathetic irrelevance.
Most of the institutional Church does not speak to the needs of people, especially the have-nots in society! When was the last time we heard from the institutional Church that there must be universal health care for people; we must not engage in so many of the wars in which we are currently engaged; we must build shelters for homeless people; we must put the needs of American workers before the desire to export jobs to other countries; we must embrace God's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children?
The institutional Church is both dangerous and pathetically irrelevant! Notice its absence by Hedges from the list of disciplines and institutions that can be instrumental in helping to hold back the destructive tide emanating from the power elite: "We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. As those who retained their identity during slavery or the long night of twentieth-century fascism and communism discovered, resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance. Music, theater, art, poetry, journalism, literature, dance, and the humanities, including the study of philosophy and history, will be the bulwarks that separate those who remain human from those who become savages." (p. 196)
As it currently exists, the structures and functions of most of the institutional Church consigns it either to alignment with the enemies of the desires of God's heart or to complete irrelevance!
Saturday, August 27, 2011
WE SHOULD REMOVE TAX-EXEMPT STATUS FROM RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS
UPDATE, September 1, 2011. "A Los Angeles, California Pastor Wednesday night evicted gays and lesbians from a meeting his church was having about SB 48, the FAIR Education Act, that ensures the correct teaching of the history of the LGBT community, along with that of the disabled and of minorities...."
UPDATE, August 31, 2011. And there are some who wonder why so many LGBT people hate what is falsely called "Christianity." Christianity is about love of God and of others, and to live simply, caring for others, and not judging others. It is not about hate and exclusion of others! If most decent people really knew what Christianity is, they'd become Christians! Those who call Gay people sinners, in the name of God no less, are committing a most grievous sin in that they are denying the validity and sanctity of what God has made! God made Gay people in God's very own image, and the haters will never understand that fact!
UPDATE, August 30, 2011: By his "church," and religious institutions like this, being tax-exempt, we are helping to financially support this bile!
Glenn Beck announced that to follow up his rally in Jerusalem, he will be appearing at High Point Church in Arlington, Texas, on Sunday. That church is notable for a particularly horrific example of anti-gay bigotry: its decision to cancel a memorial service for a Gulf War veteran because the deceased man was gay.
In 2007, the church volunteered to host a memorial service for Cecil Sinclair, a Navy veteran who served in the Gulf War. However, the day before the memorial service was to be held, the church withdrew its invitation. The Associated Press reported at the time that family members said that the church knew Sinclair was gay, but canceled the service "after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors."
[For the full article, see here.]
This is a very good reason why churches should be made to pay their fair share of taxes, and no longer be tax-exempt. High Point church, as any religious institution, as a private organization, has every right to decide who it will accept as a member and to whom it will minister.
However, as an institution that is indirectly supported by tax payers, it has no right to discriminate against anyone. It seems to me that it would be money well spent to take this issue to court and agitate for the removal of tax-exempt status for all religious institutions in the U.S.
Tax payers should not in any way be subsidizing private organizations, particularly those who discriminate against others based upon affectional-sexual orientation, any more than we should subsidize any private organization that discriminates against African Americans or Jewish people. Moreover, why should taxpayers subsidize any private organization in the first place?
UPDATE, August 31, 2011. And there are some who wonder why so many LGBT people hate what is falsely called "Christianity." Christianity is about love of God and of others, and to live simply, caring for others, and not judging others. It is not about hate and exclusion of others! If most decent people really knew what Christianity is, they'd become Christians! Those who call Gay people sinners, in the name of God no less, are committing a most grievous sin in that they are denying the validity and sanctity of what God has made! God made Gay people in God's very own image, and the haters will never understand that fact!
UPDATE, August 30, 2011: By his "church," and religious institutions like this, being tax-exempt, we are helping to financially support this bile!
Glenn Beck announced that to follow up his rally in Jerusalem, he will be appearing at High Point Church in Arlington, Texas, on Sunday. That church is notable for a particularly horrific example of anti-gay bigotry: its decision to cancel a memorial service for a Gulf War veteran because the deceased man was gay.
In 2007, the church volunteered to host a memorial service for Cecil Sinclair, a Navy veteran who served in the Gulf War. However, the day before the memorial service was to be held, the church withdrew its invitation. The Associated Press reported at the time that family members said that the church knew Sinclair was gay, but canceled the service "after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors."
[For the full article, see here.]
This is a very good reason why churches should be made to pay their fair share of taxes, and no longer be tax-exempt. High Point church, as any religious institution, as a private organization, has every right to decide who it will accept as a member and to whom it will minister.
However, as an institution that is indirectly supported by tax payers, it has no right to discriminate against anyone. It seems to me that it would be money well spent to take this issue to court and agitate for the removal of tax-exempt status for all religious institutions in the U.S.
Tax payers should not in any way be subsidizing private organizations, particularly those who discriminate against others based upon affectional-sexual orientation, any more than we should subsidize any private organization that discriminates against African Americans or Jewish people. Moreover, why should taxpayers subsidize any private organization in the first place?
Friday, August 12, 2011
ANOTHER HOMOPHOBIC OUTRAGE
UPDATE, August 24, 2011. This is SICK! And it may well have been made by homophobes who are mocking the stereotype of what they think Gay people are like. And any Gay person who thinks this is funny, and not a burlesque of gay men and what it means to be gay, must be deluded and filled with self-loathing.
UPDATE, August 17, 2011.
Words fail me! What idiocy and a back handed slap against Gay people! And, unfortunately, too many Gay people, many of whom are self-styled "activists" and "progressives," are too apolitical and/or clueless to even recognize that fact. I'll bet that these people, most of whom revel in using the word "queer," (definitions of which are "abnormal," "strange," and "mentally unbalanced") think that this scenario is very funny.
This ad is another indicator that shows the dumbing down of our culture, and the coarseness of views that deny the inherent dignity of Gay people and the normality of being Gay. Moreover, there will undoubtedly be Gay apologists for this homophobic ad, who will use as a reason that this ad is allegedly designed to raise money for a worthy cause. As if that is a justifiable reason to trash Gay people and same-sex love!
UPDATE, August 17, 2011.
Words fail me! What idiocy and a back handed slap against Gay people! And, unfortunately, too many Gay people, many of whom are self-styled "activists" and "progressives," are too apolitical and/or clueless to even recognize that fact. I'll bet that these people, most of whom revel in using the word "queer," (definitions of which are "abnormal," "strange," and "mentally unbalanced") think that this scenario is very funny.
This ad is another indicator that shows the dumbing down of our culture, and the coarseness of views that deny the inherent dignity of Gay people and the normality of being Gay. Moreover, there will undoubtedly be Gay apologists for this homophobic ad, who will use as a reason that this ad is allegedly designed to raise money for a worthy cause. As if that is a justifiable reason to trash Gay people and same-sex love!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
COURT PAPERS FILED TO REMOVE DOMA
The move to remove DOMA has taken a significant step forward. The fact that the Legislature in New York, with the approval of a number of Republicans on that Legislature, awarded marriage rights to same-sex couples in that state has helped make the following move possible:
New York's law granting marriage rights to same-sex couples has only been in effect for a week, but advocates on both sides of the issue have wasted no time taking their arguments to court.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed court papers charging that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional on a number of fronts, including an "unprecedented intrusion" on the right of states to regulate marriage....
In a brief filed in the case Windsor v United States of America, Schneiderman argued that DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment by failing to provide equal rights to all Americans and the Tenth Amendment by impeding the right of states to regulate marriage.
[For the full article, see here.]
New York's law granting marriage rights to same-sex couples has only been in effect for a week, but advocates on both sides of the issue have wasted no time taking their arguments to court.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed court papers charging that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional on a number of fronts, including an "unprecedented intrusion" on the right of states to regulate marriage....
In a brief filed in the case Windsor v United States of America, Schneiderman argued that DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment by failing to provide equal rights to all Americans and the Tenth Amendment by impeding the right of states to regulate marriage.
[For the full article, see here.]
Thursday, July 21, 2011
FOCUS ON THE FAMILY CAUGHT LYING TO CONGRESS
Since the arguments put forth by such homophobic groups as Focus on the Family are bankrupt, they distort or lie about the viability and health of same-sex families. Here is one example that was exposed by Sen. Al Franken:
Friday, June 10, 2011
TRAITOROUS RESULTS OF INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA
The late psychiatrist and activist, Frantz Fanon, in his book, Black Skin, White Masks, wrote the following:
Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.
We've seen such perverted and freakish public displays as "The Hunky Jesus Contest" [If you have any doubts about my description, check out some links regarding this contest.], "The Million Fag March," "The Folsom Street Fair," and all sorts of displays and demonstrations that affirm the equation of "Gay" with mere "Sexuality," and perverted sexuality at that, that with regular and insistent demonstrations mimic and confirm the very same mind-set of strident homophobes who are the avowed enemies of Gay people.
These displays are offensive on a number of levels, and are designed to be offensive; are designed to alienate potential Straight allies from the cause of equal rights. And to compound this felony, many "Gay Activists" affirm such displays, and even seek to religiously justify them.
Even Kittredge Cherry, a Christian Gay activist who is far more comfortable in sexualizing Jesus than I am, has reservations about parts of the Hunky Jesus Contest, but she also sees benefits of it that I strongly feel are counterproductive and traitorous to the fight for equal rights; the whole contest is blasphemous.
Equating being Gay with being a perverted freak not only plays right into the oppressor's hands, but shows the internalization of the oppressor's mind-set that he/she uses to justify in his/her own mind the oppression of LGBT people.
Hence, many of the oppressed internalize and display the very stereotypes of the strident homophobe, and act out in ways virtually guaranteed to stick a finger in the eye of potential Straight allies by grossly offending institutions and beliefs held dear by the very people needed to help make LGBT equality a reality.
The fact that one is Gay whether or not he/she can have sex; one is Straight whether or not he/she can have sex, largely escapes these displays and demonstrations that serve as mere fodder for the rabid homophobes, many of whom make a handsome living castigating God's LGBT children.
These indecent and often pornographic displays show an alignment, a perverted affinity, with strident homophobes, the result of the internalization of largely unconscious shame and self-loathing taken from the many years of grinding oppression.
And this internalization has got to be transcended and overcome before significant headway can be made in the fight for LGBT equality, an equality that purveyors of these displays clearly do not now want, despite some rhetoric to the contrary.
Applying Fanon's analysis to many Gay people, the oppressed have so internalized the oppressor's mind-set about them that they feel the need to act out according to those internalized homophobic norms, consciously or unconsciously believing the lies perpetrated by strident homophobes, particularly homophobic clergy, who have the temerity to speak with oracular authority, invoking the name of God in their disdain for LGBT people.
Homophobes call Gay people "queer," and many Gay people call themselves "queer"; homophobes call gay men "fags," and many gay men call themselves "fags"; homophobes call lesbians "dykes," and many lesbians refer to themselves by that term; homophobes refer to Gay people as "freaks," and some Gay people act as "freaks"; homophobes refer to Gay people as "perverted," and some Gay people publicly act as "perverts."
If anyone has any doubt concerning some Gay people's view that being Gay is to be a publicly displayed freakish pervert, the exact same view held by strident homophobes and used by them as justification for the denial of equal rights for LGBT people, just check out some links regarding some of the aforementioned public displays!
And if one should tell gay men and lesbians that use of these words, and patently and deliberately offensive public displays, are counterproductive and traitorous, that person is usually met with derision by those with such internalized shame, housing the same belief system as their oppressors, that they refuse to examine, let alone seek to change, the impact of the sources and consequences in their psyches and in society of much of their rhetoric and behaviors.
Simply put: Use of pejorative labels as self-identifiers, and freakish displays one-dimensionally sexualizing Gay identity as perversion, not only affirms the beliefs and rhetoric of strident homophobes, but also highlights the fact that those labels and displays emanate from the very same mind-set of the oppressor that have been internalized by those Gay people who in any way feel comfortable using such rhetoric, and/or engaging in such displays, that are guaranteed to retard the struggle for LGBT equality!
Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.
We've seen such perverted and freakish public displays as "The Hunky Jesus Contest" [If you have any doubts about my description, check out some links regarding this contest.], "The Million Fag March," "The Folsom Street Fair," and all sorts of displays and demonstrations that affirm the equation of "Gay" with mere "Sexuality," and perverted sexuality at that, that with regular and insistent demonstrations mimic and confirm the very same mind-set of strident homophobes who are the avowed enemies of Gay people.
These displays are offensive on a number of levels, and are designed to be offensive; are designed to alienate potential Straight allies from the cause of equal rights. And to compound this felony, many "Gay Activists" affirm such displays, and even seek to religiously justify them.
Even Kittredge Cherry, a Christian Gay activist who is far more comfortable in sexualizing Jesus than I am, has reservations about parts of the Hunky Jesus Contest, but she also sees benefits of it that I strongly feel are counterproductive and traitorous to the fight for equal rights; the whole contest is blasphemous.
Equating being Gay with being a perverted freak not only plays right into the oppressor's hands, but shows the internalization of the oppressor's mind-set that he/she uses to justify in his/her own mind the oppression of LGBT people.
Hence, many of the oppressed internalize and display the very stereotypes of the strident homophobe, and act out in ways virtually guaranteed to stick a finger in the eye of potential Straight allies by grossly offending institutions and beliefs held dear by the very people needed to help make LGBT equality a reality.
The fact that one is Gay whether or not he/she can have sex; one is Straight whether or not he/she can have sex, largely escapes these displays and demonstrations that serve as mere fodder for the rabid homophobes, many of whom make a handsome living castigating God's LGBT children.
These indecent and often pornographic displays show an alignment, a perverted affinity, with strident homophobes, the result of the internalization of largely unconscious shame and self-loathing taken from the many years of grinding oppression.
And this internalization has got to be transcended and overcome before significant headway can be made in the fight for LGBT equality, an equality that purveyors of these displays clearly do not now want, despite some rhetoric to the contrary.
Applying Fanon's analysis to many Gay people, the oppressed have so internalized the oppressor's mind-set about them that they feel the need to act out according to those internalized homophobic norms, consciously or unconsciously believing the lies perpetrated by strident homophobes, particularly homophobic clergy, who have the temerity to speak with oracular authority, invoking the name of God in their disdain for LGBT people.
Homophobes call Gay people "queer," and many Gay people call themselves "queer"; homophobes call gay men "fags," and many gay men call themselves "fags"; homophobes call lesbians "dykes," and many lesbians refer to themselves by that term; homophobes refer to Gay people as "freaks," and some Gay people act as "freaks"; homophobes refer to Gay people as "perverted," and some Gay people publicly act as "perverts."
If anyone has any doubt concerning some Gay people's view that being Gay is to be a publicly displayed freakish pervert, the exact same view held by strident homophobes and used by them as justification for the denial of equal rights for LGBT people, just check out some links regarding some of the aforementioned public displays!
And if one should tell gay men and lesbians that use of these words, and patently and deliberately offensive public displays, are counterproductive and traitorous, that person is usually met with derision by those with such internalized shame, housing the same belief system as their oppressors, that they refuse to examine, let alone seek to change, the impact of the sources and consequences in their psyches and in society of much of their rhetoric and behaviors.
Simply put: Use of pejorative labels as self-identifiers, and freakish displays one-dimensionally sexualizing Gay identity as perversion, not only affirms the beliefs and rhetoric of strident homophobes, but also highlights the fact that those labels and displays emanate from the very same mind-set of the oppressor that have been internalized by those Gay people who in any way feel comfortable using such rhetoric, and/or engaging in such displays, that are guaranteed to retard the struggle for LGBT equality!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
SOME CONSEQUENCES OF INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA
I feel that this post of a few weeks ago is very important and deserving of being posted again:
All too often, many if not most LGBT people are either uncaring about gaining full and equal civil and sacramental rights or allegedly seek to gain those rights by tactics designed to stick a finger in the eye of potential Straight allies.
The horrific treatment of Gay people by many others, not the least of whom are "Christian" clergy, has created a mind-set among many Gay people that reflects the internalization of those hateful messages, resulting in terribly damaged psyches that don't have the time or even the inclination to fight for equality.
Most of LGBT people's psychic energy is geared toward seeking some level of peace in a world that treats them as second-class citizens; engaging in diversionary behaviors, such as preoccupation with socializing, that helps foster needed in-group feelings on the one hand, and also helps take their minds off of the fact that they are treated as second-class citizens in a country that prides itself on its Constitutional mandate for there to be equality under the law on the other hand.
There must be a transformation of consciousness, not only of most Straight people, but of LGBT people themselves, for there to be meaningful activism that assures the goal of LGBT equality for those of us who give a damn about equal rights for everybody.
My good friend, Don Charles, has the following to say on this matter of non-meaningful "activism":
In "March Down Babylon", a three-part call to action originally published at my old blog Christ, The Gay Martyr, I drew a distinction between productive and counter-productive Gay Rights demonstrations. The very first thing I cautioned against was protesters turning out in drag(recognizing, of course, that clothing which expresses a Transperson's gender identity is not drag). Over many years, cross-dressing has become linked with Mardi Gras revelry and Pride parade excesses; Gay activists done up like refugees from a production of Priscilla, Queen of The Desert are simply not going to be taken seriously!
The second (and also third) thing I cautioned against was LGBT folk publicly using pejoratives in reference to themselves. Regardless of how many deluded folk believe otherwise, the hate-inspired epithets of our oppressors can never empower us! On the contrary, they weaken us while heightening the ignorance those evil names were born of. What good will heightened ignorance do for our movement? Has it done us any good in the past? When both Gay Rights demonstrators and anti-Gay bigots describe an act of civil disobedience as "queers blocking traffic", how can anybody in his right mind argue that consciousness has been raised???
My belief is that so much psychic energy of most Gay people is geared toward struggling with their own internalized homophobia, whether they are out or not, that they are neither politically interested in gaining equality and/or engage in frivolous activities, under the guise of "activism" or not, that takes their minds off of the fact that they are viewed as second-class citizens, if not pariahs, in our society.
Until that transformation of consciousness that eradicates, or at least transcends, that internalized homophobia occurs, that light of full equality at the end of the tunnel will continue to remain elusive.
All too often, many if not most LGBT people are either uncaring about gaining full and equal civil and sacramental rights or allegedly seek to gain those rights by tactics designed to stick a finger in the eye of potential Straight allies.
The horrific treatment of Gay people by many others, not the least of whom are "Christian" clergy, has created a mind-set among many Gay people that reflects the internalization of those hateful messages, resulting in terribly damaged psyches that don't have the time or even the inclination to fight for equality.
Most of LGBT people's psychic energy is geared toward seeking some level of peace in a world that treats them as second-class citizens; engaging in diversionary behaviors, such as preoccupation with socializing, that helps foster needed in-group feelings on the one hand, and also helps take their minds off of the fact that they are treated as second-class citizens in a country that prides itself on its Constitutional mandate for there to be equality under the law on the other hand.
There must be a transformation of consciousness, not only of most Straight people, but of LGBT people themselves, for there to be meaningful activism that assures the goal of LGBT equality for those of us who give a damn about equal rights for everybody.
My good friend, Don Charles, has the following to say on this matter of non-meaningful "activism":
In "March Down Babylon", a three-part call to action originally published at my old blog Christ, The Gay Martyr, I drew a distinction between productive and counter-productive Gay Rights demonstrations. The very first thing I cautioned against was protesters turning out in drag(recognizing, of course, that clothing which expresses a Transperson's gender identity is not drag). Over many years, cross-dressing has become linked with Mardi Gras revelry and Pride parade excesses; Gay activists done up like refugees from a production of Priscilla, Queen of The Desert are simply not going to be taken seriously!
The second (and also third) thing I cautioned against was LGBT folk publicly using pejoratives in reference to themselves. Regardless of how many deluded folk believe otherwise, the hate-inspired epithets of our oppressors can never empower us! On the contrary, they weaken us while heightening the ignorance those evil names were born of. What good will heightened ignorance do for our movement? Has it done us any good in the past? When both Gay Rights demonstrators and anti-Gay bigots describe an act of civil disobedience as "queers blocking traffic", how can anybody in his right mind argue that consciousness has been raised???
My belief is that so much psychic energy of most Gay people is geared toward struggling with their own internalized homophobia, whether they are out or not, that they are neither politically interested in gaining equality and/or engage in frivolous activities, under the guise of "activism" or not, that takes their minds off of the fact that they are viewed as second-class citizens, if not pariahs, in our society.
Until that transformation of consciousness that eradicates, or at least transcends, that internalized homophobia occurs, that light of full equality at the end of the tunnel will continue to remain elusive.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE BLACK AND THE LGBT CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTS
In the interview by the Washington Blade of Don Lemon entitled, Proud to be out, an interview I strongly urge you to read, the following is mentioned by Don Lemon:
But when the backbone, the structure of the community has been so associated with the church, it’s even doubly more imprinted on your being and on your psyche.
It seems to me that this is the major difference between the African American Civil Rights movement in the 1950's-60's, where the Black Church was usually behind the fight for equality, and the current LGBT Civil Rights movement. And it's a gigantic difference.
Now, the Black Church is usually against the fight for equal rights for equality by LGBT people; even resent the comparison between the two Civil Rights movements.
Hence, the lack of church and community support for LGBT people and this struggle, which leads to low self-esteem and lack of organization counted on in the Black Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's.
African Americans had role models right in their own families, churches, and neighborhoods; people who would affirm them as people of worth. Most of their churches saw their struggle for equality as they did Moses leading the children of Israel to the Promised Land.
In the LGBT Civil Rights movement, it is rare for a young Gay person to have role models in his/her nuclear family and what LGBT people exist in his/her church and neighborhood are usually closeted.
This is one of the reasons why the fight for equality for LGBT people is much more difficult than it was for African Americans, as self-esteem among the former is far less than it was among the latter; consciousness of kind was far greater among the latter than it is the former.
Therefore, we can't count on the Black churches to help lead the way toward the Promised Land of equality for LGBT people, just as we can't count on predominantly White churches to help lead the way for LGBT people to reach that Promised Land of equality.
Unlike the Black Civil Rights movement, it will have to be secular forces within society, both at the organizational and grass roots levels, that will have to lead the way among LGBT people whose identity is neither affirmed nor respected within those institutions with which they are most intimately involved and familiar.
And it is this reality that will make the fight for LGBT equality even more difficult than it was for our African American brothers and sisters!
But when the backbone, the structure of the community has been so associated with the church, it’s even doubly more imprinted on your being and on your psyche.
It seems to me that this is the major difference between the African American Civil Rights movement in the 1950's-60's, where the Black Church was usually behind the fight for equality, and the current LGBT Civil Rights movement. And it's a gigantic difference.
Now, the Black Church is usually against the fight for equal rights for equality by LGBT people; even resent the comparison between the two Civil Rights movements.
Hence, the lack of church and community support for LGBT people and this struggle, which leads to low self-esteem and lack of organization counted on in the Black Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's.
African Americans had role models right in their own families, churches, and neighborhoods; people who would affirm them as people of worth. Most of their churches saw their struggle for equality as they did Moses leading the children of Israel to the Promised Land.
In the LGBT Civil Rights movement, it is rare for a young Gay person to have role models in his/her nuclear family and what LGBT people exist in his/her church and neighborhood are usually closeted.
This is one of the reasons why the fight for equality for LGBT people is much more difficult than it was for African Americans, as self-esteem among the former is far less than it was among the latter; consciousness of kind was far greater among the latter than it is the former.
Therefore, we can't count on the Black churches to help lead the way toward the Promised Land of equality for LGBT people, just as we can't count on predominantly White churches to help lead the way for LGBT people to reach that Promised Land of equality.
Unlike the Black Civil Rights movement, it will have to be secular forces within society, both at the organizational and grass roots levels, that will have to lead the way among LGBT people whose identity is neither affirmed nor respected within those institutions with which they are most intimately involved and familiar.
And it is this reality that will make the fight for LGBT equality even more difficult than it was for our African American brothers and sisters!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
HOMOPHOBIC PROFESSING CHRISTIANS DEFAME CHRISTIANITY
UPDATE, 5/27: Rockford Catholic diocese to end adoption programs over same-sex civil unions.
The following post is a repeat of the post I wrote last February 9th, as I feel it is worth repeating here:
A couple of years ago, I received the following email from the American Family Association. It read as follows:
Dear Rev. Dr. Jerry S.,
"ESPN and its parent company, ABC, have refused to take any action against ESPN anchorwoman Dana Jacobson for her hateful, slurring remarks against Jesus, saying 'F-- -- Jesus.'
"On January 11, Jacobson was speaking at a celebrity roast in Atlantic City, N.J., when she unleashed a profane tirade, saying, 'F--- Notre Dame,' 'F--- Touchdown Jesus' and finally 'F--- Jesus.'
"'Touchdown Jesus' is the popular moniker for a statue of Jesus raising his arms, located on the Notre Dame campus.
"Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke with ESPN about the attack and received an e-mail from Jacobson which basically treated the incident as a non-event. The statement said, in part, 'I respect all religions and did not mean anything derogatory by my poorly chosen words.'
"Jacobson's comments were at a public event where she was representing ESPN.
"The fact that neither ESPN nor ABC has taken any action against Jacobson indicates they have a bias against Christians. Donohue said that Jacobson should be fired.
"This anti-Christian bias of the networks is becoming commonplace. Actress Kathy Griffin used her appearance on the Emmy Awards program to tell Jesus to 'suck it,' responding to athletes who thank Jesus when they achieve certain levels. No action was taken against Griffin."
Although I find the "popular moniker" for the statue of Jesus at Notre Dame to be defamatory, as it trivializes Jesus, I also find the statements made by Dana Jacobson and Kathy Griffin, as reported by the AFA, to be defamatory, showing the contempt that they may well have for Christianity. They have no apparent qualms that their defamatory statements would offend their listeners.
And, the unfortunate fact is that it is very likely that increasing numbers of people would not be offended by their statements as reported. And that likelihood is due to the fact that we have allowed as spokespeople for Christianity to be what used to be until recently "the fringe" within the Christian community.
What was the fringe a mere thirty years ago has largely overtaken much, if not most, of the institutional Church and most all clergy, and other professing Christians, have not condemned the hate-mongering and hateful rhetoric that has been spewed from all too many pulpits against LGBT people. Indeed, the history of the institutional Church is replete with its being enmeshed with the most reactionary forces within secular society, being their spokespeople, affirming their hatred and exclusion of assorted minority groups, and being in the vanguard in the oppression visited upon LGBT people.
This reality has caused untold numbers of intelligent, sensitive, and decent people to distance themselves not only from the institutional Church but from Christianity itself, as these people falsely believe that the fringe, the haters, the homophobic clergy speak for Christianity and speak for God. Indeed, many Christians have distanced themselves from the institutional Church and, as in my case, do not even go to church any longer, unless it is a church that embraces all of God's children.
Christianity is largely held in contempt by many people because clergy and other professing Christians have not confronted the homophobic clergy for not only preaching the false gospel of legalism, perfectionism, and exclusion, but for perverting Christianity to be in accordance with their own prejudices and, frequently, hate-filled hearts.
Moreover, those who profess to be Christians, by their mere attendance in churches that have homophobic clergy as their pastors, have lent credibility to those clergy, and have affirmed and encouraged the homophobic hatefulness that has been spewed for all too many years. And such clergy have also emboldened assorted politicians and others to either to engage in homophobic rhetoric themselves or, just as hatefully and cowardly, helped prevent almost all politicians to be against full and equal civil rights for Gay people.
The image of Christianity has come to such a sorry, distorted, state that it is very likely that if you even mention the word "Christian," the first word that would likely come into another person's mind would be the word "sin." The crying shame is that the word "love" would not likely be the first word that would come into people's minds when the word "Christian" is used.
I don't merely blame the homophobic clergy for this state of affairs, but I also blame cowardly professing Christians for allowing these clergy to speak for Christianity, for the Church, and for God, and to do so with impunity!
The very fact that homophobic clergy and others know that most people will not confront them for the anti-Christian sentiments they express partakes of the same dynamic as the defamation of Jesus by some people in the media. Both groups of people fail to know what Christianity truly is, and that is because the living out of the Christian life is so infrequent; the exposition of the Gospel of Christ is similarly infrequent; they know that their target audiences are likely to view their hateful sentiments favorably.
The only Gospel to be found in Christianity is the Gospel of grace (God's unmerited favor), faith (trusting God over and above seen circumstances), love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness. Anything else is not of God and is, indeed, a distortion and perversion of Christianity!
That's why the word "Gospel" means "good news!" The Christian is liberated from legalism and from the yokes of bondage imposed by mere fallible human beings.
Jesus tells us that we are free! Hear Him: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." (John 8:36)
The homophobic clergy and their blind followers, uttering words and frequently acting in discriminatory ways diametrically opposed to the Gospel, show by their rhetoric and actions the facts that they, themselves, are not free, and that they don't seem to have a clue concerning the Gospel of Christ.
Moreover, they also seek to impose yokes of bondage onto others so that other people can be as warped in their theology and in their lives as they are; by so doing see to it that intelligent, sensitive, decent people aren't likely to even consider Christianity as "a reasonable faith" and as a viable way by which to navigate their lives in this world.
Indeed, homophobic clergy and other homophobic professing Christians are doing the devil's work!
And if professing Christians remain silent in this matter, and don't speak out against the perversion of the Gospel and the demonizing of LGBT people, they are not only aligning themselves with these homophobes, but they are showing themselves to be every bit as culpable in doing the devil's work!
The following post is a repeat of the post I wrote last February 9th, as I feel it is worth repeating here:
A couple of years ago, I received the following email from the American Family Association. It read as follows:
Dear Rev. Dr. Jerry S.,
"ESPN and its parent company, ABC, have refused to take any action against ESPN anchorwoman Dana Jacobson for her hateful, slurring remarks against Jesus, saying 'F-- -- Jesus.'
"On January 11, Jacobson was speaking at a celebrity roast in Atlantic City, N.J., when she unleashed a profane tirade, saying, 'F--- Notre Dame,' 'F--- Touchdown Jesus' and finally 'F--- Jesus.'
"'Touchdown Jesus' is the popular moniker for a statue of Jesus raising his arms, located on the Notre Dame campus.
"Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke with ESPN about the attack and received an e-mail from Jacobson which basically treated the incident as a non-event. The statement said, in part, 'I respect all religions and did not mean anything derogatory by my poorly chosen words.'
"Jacobson's comments were at a public event where she was representing ESPN.
"The fact that neither ESPN nor ABC has taken any action against Jacobson indicates they have a bias against Christians. Donohue said that Jacobson should be fired.
"This anti-Christian bias of the networks is becoming commonplace. Actress Kathy Griffin used her appearance on the Emmy Awards program to tell Jesus to 'suck it,' responding to athletes who thank Jesus when they achieve certain levels. No action was taken against Griffin."
Although I find the "popular moniker" for the statue of Jesus at Notre Dame to be defamatory, as it trivializes Jesus, I also find the statements made by Dana Jacobson and Kathy Griffin, as reported by the AFA, to be defamatory, showing the contempt that they may well have for Christianity. They have no apparent qualms that their defamatory statements would offend their listeners.
And, the unfortunate fact is that it is very likely that increasing numbers of people would not be offended by their statements as reported. And that likelihood is due to the fact that we have allowed as spokespeople for Christianity to be what used to be until recently "the fringe" within the Christian community.
What was the fringe a mere thirty years ago has largely overtaken much, if not most, of the institutional Church and most all clergy, and other professing Christians, have not condemned the hate-mongering and hateful rhetoric that has been spewed from all too many pulpits against LGBT people. Indeed, the history of the institutional Church is replete with its being enmeshed with the most reactionary forces within secular society, being their spokespeople, affirming their hatred and exclusion of assorted minority groups, and being in the vanguard in the oppression visited upon LGBT people.
This reality has caused untold numbers of intelligent, sensitive, and decent people to distance themselves not only from the institutional Church but from Christianity itself, as these people falsely believe that the fringe, the haters, the homophobic clergy speak for Christianity and speak for God. Indeed, many Christians have distanced themselves from the institutional Church and, as in my case, do not even go to church any longer, unless it is a church that embraces all of God's children.
Christianity is largely held in contempt by many people because clergy and other professing Christians have not confronted the homophobic clergy for not only preaching the false gospel of legalism, perfectionism, and exclusion, but for perverting Christianity to be in accordance with their own prejudices and, frequently, hate-filled hearts.
Moreover, those who profess to be Christians, by their mere attendance in churches that have homophobic clergy as their pastors, have lent credibility to those clergy, and have affirmed and encouraged the homophobic hatefulness that has been spewed for all too many years. And such clergy have also emboldened assorted politicians and others to either to engage in homophobic rhetoric themselves or, just as hatefully and cowardly, helped prevent almost all politicians to be against full and equal civil rights for Gay people.
The image of Christianity has come to such a sorry, distorted, state that it is very likely that if you even mention the word "Christian," the first word that would likely come into another person's mind would be the word "sin." The crying shame is that the word "love" would not likely be the first word that would come into people's minds when the word "Christian" is used.
I don't merely blame the homophobic clergy for this state of affairs, but I also blame cowardly professing Christians for allowing these clergy to speak for Christianity, for the Church, and for God, and to do so with impunity!
The very fact that homophobic clergy and others know that most people will not confront them for the anti-Christian sentiments they express partakes of the same dynamic as the defamation of Jesus by some people in the media. Both groups of people fail to know what Christianity truly is, and that is because the living out of the Christian life is so infrequent; the exposition of the Gospel of Christ is similarly infrequent; they know that their target audiences are likely to view their hateful sentiments favorably.
The only Gospel to be found in Christianity is the Gospel of grace (God's unmerited favor), faith (trusting God over and above seen circumstances), love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness. Anything else is not of God and is, indeed, a distortion and perversion of Christianity!
That's why the word "Gospel" means "good news!" The Christian is liberated from legalism and from the yokes of bondage imposed by mere fallible human beings.
Jesus tells us that we are free! Hear Him: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." (John 8:36)
The homophobic clergy and their blind followers, uttering words and frequently acting in discriminatory ways diametrically opposed to the Gospel, show by their rhetoric and actions the facts that they, themselves, are not free, and that they don't seem to have a clue concerning the Gospel of Christ.
Moreover, they also seek to impose yokes of bondage onto others so that other people can be as warped in their theology and in their lives as they are; by so doing see to it that intelligent, sensitive, decent people aren't likely to even consider Christianity as "a reasonable faith" and as a viable way by which to navigate their lives in this world.
Indeed, homophobic clergy and other homophobic professing Christians are doing the devil's work!
And if professing Christians remain silent in this matter, and don't speak out against the perversion of the Gospel and the demonizing of LGBT people, they are not only aligning themselves with these homophobes, but they are showing themselves to be every bit as culpable in doing the devil's work!
Friday, May 6, 2011
A MESSAGE REGARDING FULL INCLUSION OF GAY PEOPLE IN EVERY ASPECT OF SECULAR AND CHURCH LIFE
UPDATE, 5/10: ESSENTIAL READING: PUTTING AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN FACE ON GAY MARRIAGE
The above is a well thought-out and articulate message for full acceptance of Gay people!
In this connection, the following contains some of the quotes I made in an interview for an article that appears in this week's edition of the "Chico News and Review," entitled, "Is Homosexuality a Sin?", by Jerry Olenyn:
One who is unafraid to speak his mind is the Rev. Jerry Maneker, a retired professor of sociology at Chico State and an ordained Christian minister.
Maneker posts a blog online called “A Christian Voice for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights.”
He compares gay rights to the civil-rights movement of 50 years ago. “In 40 years we’ll be wondering how it was possible that we could have prevented gays from full participation in the life of the church.”
Maneker goes further. He blames the church for contributing to the high suicide rate among gay teens, stating that ministers who preach that homosexuality is sinful, or who remain silent amidst homophobic rhetoric, have “blood on their hands.”
He says clergy—no matter their tone or earnestness—who preach that homosexuality is evil engage in hate speech.
“There are different degrees of hate speech,” Maneker said. “But ultimately these ministers give permission to whack-jobs to feel free to kill and bash gay people because they think they’re doing God’s mission.”
Of course, I stand by those comments in which I fervently believe. Some other ministers called my contentions "absurd," which is to be expected by those who allow their preconceived prejudices, based on ignorance and/or hate, to trump the Gospel of grace.
I have no doubt that full integration of Gay people in every aspect of secular and institutional Church life will follow the trajectory of the full integration of African-Americans in the United States!
The above is a well thought-out and articulate message for full acceptance of Gay people!
In this connection, the following contains some of the quotes I made in an interview for an article that appears in this week's edition of the "Chico News and Review," entitled, "Is Homosexuality a Sin?", by Jerry Olenyn:
One who is unafraid to speak his mind is the Rev. Jerry Maneker, a retired professor of sociology at Chico State and an ordained Christian minister.
Maneker posts a blog online called “A Christian Voice for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights.”
He compares gay rights to the civil-rights movement of 50 years ago. “In 40 years we’ll be wondering how it was possible that we could have prevented gays from full participation in the life of the church.”
Maneker goes further. He blames the church for contributing to the high suicide rate among gay teens, stating that ministers who preach that homosexuality is sinful, or who remain silent amidst homophobic rhetoric, have “blood on their hands.”
He says clergy—no matter their tone or earnestness—who preach that homosexuality is evil engage in hate speech.
“There are different degrees of hate speech,” Maneker said. “But ultimately these ministers give permission to whack-jobs to feel free to kill and bash gay people because they think they’re doing God’s mission.”
Of course, I stand by those comments in which I fervently believe. Some other ministers called my contentions "absurd," which is to be expected by those who allow their preconceived prejudices, based on ignorance and/or hate, to trump the Gospel of grace.
I have no doubt that full integration of Gay people in every aspect of secular and institutional Church life will follow the trajectory of the full integration of African-Americans in the United States!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
THE CHURCH IN AMERICA
The following post is an article that appears in my column, "Christianity and Society," in the "Sacramento Valley Mirror":
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. (Haggai 1:6)
You’ll notice I entitled this article, “The Church in America,” rather than “Christianity in America, as there is a world of difference between “churchgoers” and “Christians”; between “the religious” and “the spiritual.” Of course, there is some degree of overlap between the two, but it is my perception that that degree of overlap does not go anywhere near to approaching 100%.
The institutional Church and its enmeshment with Americanism, patriotism, jingoism, militarism, and capitalism can not be underestimated, as can be seen when an atheist and/or socialist has no chance of becoming a viable presidential candidate; when candidates for political office must be seen going to church. Their spiritual lives are irrelevant, as can be seen when Ronald and Nancy Reagan allegedly consulted psychics to determine assorted decisions, but they had to be seen attending church to be considered “Christians.”
To add insult to injury, most of the institutional Church not only doesn’t speak to crucial spiritually involved human rights issues of the day, but usually acts as an apologist for the power elite that frames the arguments and parameters of our perceptions of those crucial issues that are thereby serving to diminish the civil rights and civil liberties of most people in society, particularly those in the lower and middle classes.
As Christians, we are not to side with the “elites” but with the “rebels” who seek to make this a better world, a world, to use St. Augustine’s words, that should be “a colony of heaven.” And disciples of Christ are to be those rebels who seek to institutionalize godly virtues, and fulfill Jesus’ two great Commandments to all who would be His disciples: the love of God and the love of one’s fellow human beings.
In his superb book, “Death of the Liberal Class,” Chris Hedges speaks to this inherent conflict between the elites and the rebels: “The elites and their courtiers in the liberal class always condemn the rebel as impractical. They dismiss the stance of the rebel as counterproductive. They chastise the rebel for being angry. The elites and their apologists call for calm, reason, and patience. They use the hypocritical language of compromise, generosity, and understanding to argue that we must accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to compromise…The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage—anger at the way things are and the courage to change them. The rebel knows that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion justifies itself.” (p. 215)
And disciples of Christ are to be rebels against the demonic and all forces that pit the elites against the have-nots! And the elites who fervently seek after power, prestige, and wealth are often those very people who attain and maintain those goals by use of assorted nefarious, if not demonic, forces.
Moreover, the elites frame the perceptions of most people so that “…the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.” (Hosea 9:7b) And the hatred, the contempt, the sinfully laissez faire attitude of so many toward the poor, the sick, and the needy in our society is both palpably obvious and palpably obscene.
And where is the Church in America amidst all this unrighteousness? It is all too often the major apologist for all of this unrighteousness, or else it remains silent amidst this unrighteousness!
How is the institutional Church in America addressing our military intervention in all too many countries; our precipitous economic decline; the duplicity of most politicians; the dumbing down of higher education; the multi-millions of dollars that are spent buying people’s votes; the political rhetoric that seeks to deny medical care to others? The answer is that it is often in cahoots with the power elite by being its apologist either through its rhetoric, its silence, or through its insipid rhetoric that shows its pathetic irrelevance.
Most of the institutional Church does not speak to the needs of people, especially the have-nots in society! When was the last time we heard from the institutional Church that there must be universal health care for people; we must not engage in so many of the wars in which we are currently engaged; we must build shelters for homeless people; we must put the needs of American workers before the desire to export jobs to other countries?
The institutional Church is both dangerous and pathetically irrelevant! Notice its absence by Hedges from the list of disciplines and institutions that can be instrumental in helping to hold back the destructive tide emanating from the power elite: “We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. As those who retained their identity during slavery or the long night of twentieth-century fascism and communism discovered, resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance. Music, theater, art, poetry, journalism, literature, dance, and the humanities, including the study of philosophy and history, will be the bulwarks that separate those who remain human from those who become savages.” (p. 196)
As it currently exists, the structures and functions of most of the institutional Church consigns it either to alignment with the enemies of the desires of God’s heart or to complete irrelevance!
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. (Haggai 1:6)
You’ll notice I entitled this article, “The Church in America,” rather than “Christianity in America, as there is a world of difference between “churchgoers” and “Christians”; between “the religious” and “the spiritual.” Of course, there is some degree of overlap between the two, but it is my perception that that degree of overlap does not go anywhere near to approaching 100%.
The institutional Church and its enmeshment with Americanism, patriotism, jingoism, militarism, and capitalism can not be underestimated, as can be seen when an atheist and/or socialist has no chance of becoming a viable presidential candidate; when candidates for political office must be seen going to church. Their spiritual lives are irrelevant, as can be seen when Ronald and Nancy Reagan allegedly consulted psychics to determine assorted decisions, but they had to be seen attending church to be considered “Christians.”
To add insult to injury, most of the institutional Church not only doesn’t speak to crucial spiritually involved human rights issues of the day, but usually acts as an apologist for the power elite that frames the arguments and parameters of our perceptions of those crucial issues that are thereby serving to diminish the civil rights and civil liberties of most people in society, particularly those in the lower and middle classes.
As Christians, we are not to side with the “elites” but with the “rebels” who seek to make this a better world, a world, to use St. Augustine’s words, that should be “a colony of heaven.” And disciples of Christ are to be those rebels who seek to institutionalize godly virtues, and fulfill Jesus’ two great Commandments to all who would be His disciples: the love of God and the love of one’s fellow human beings.
In his superb book, “Death of the Liberal Class,” Chris Hedges speaks to this inherent conflict between the elites and the rebels: “The elites and their courtiers in the liberal class always condemn the rebel as impractical. They dismiss the stance of the rebel as counterproductive. They chastise the rebel for being angry. The elites and their apologists call for calm, reason, and patience. They use the hypocritical language of compromise, generosity, and understanding to argue that we must accept and work with the systems of power. The rebel, however, is beholden to a moral commitment that makes it impossible to compromise…The rebel is not concerned with self-promotion or public opinion. The rebel knows that, as Augustine wrote, hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage—anger at the way things are and the courage to change them. The rebel knows that virtue is not rewarded. The act of rebellion justifies itself.” (p. 215)
And disciples of Christ are to be rebels against the demonic and all forces that pit the elites against the have-nots! And the elites who fervently seek after power, prestige, and wealth are often those very people who attain and maintain those goals by use of assorted nefarious, if not demonic, forces.
Moreover, the elites frame the perceptions of most people so that “…the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.” (Hosea 9:7b) And the hatred, the contempt, the sinfully laissez faire attitude of so many toward the poor, the sick, and the needy in our society is both palpably obvious and palpably obscene.
And where is the Church in America amidst all this unrighteousness? It is all too often the major apologist for all of this unrighteousness, or else it remains silent amidst this unrighteousness!
How is the institutional Church in America addressing our military intervention in all too many countries; our precipitous economic decline; the duplicity of most politicians; the dumbing down of higher education; the multi-millions of dollars that are spent buying people’s votes; the political rhetoric that seeks to deny medical care to others? The answer is that it is often in cahoots with the power elite by being its apologist either through its rhetoric, its silence, or through its insipid rhetoric that shows its pathetic irrelevance.
Most of the institutional Church does not speak to the needs of people, especially the have-nots in society! When was the last time we heard from the institutional Church that there must be universal health care for people; we must not engage in so many of the wars in which we are currently engaged; we must build shelters for homeless people; we must put the needs of American workers before the desire to export jobs to other countries?
The institutional Church is both dangerous and pathetically irrelevant! Notice its absence by Hedges from the list of disciplines and institutions that can be instrumental in helping to hold back the destructive tide emanating from the power elite: “We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. As those who retained their identity during slavery or the long night of twentieth-century fascism and communism discovered, resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance. Music, theater, art, poetry, journalism, literature, dance, and the humanities, including the study of philosophy and history, will be the bulwarks that separate those who remain human from those who become savages.” (p. 196)
As it currently exists, the structures and functions of most of the institutional Church consigns it either to alignment with the enemies of the desires of God’s heart or to complete irrelevance!
Sunday, May 1, 2011
OBAMA AND INCREASED RISK TO GAY MILITARY PERSONNEL
The Obama administration wants a federal appeals court to maintain the ban on openly gay servicemembers until the Pentagon is ready for them, probably by the end of the year, and to reject a demand for an immediate halt to "don't ask, don't tell," The San Francisco Chronicle reports. [For the full article, see here.]
The "retraining of current troops," and this kind of delaying tactic, is a death by a thousand cuts, and is virtually guaranteed to heighten the likelihood of assaults and even murders of gays and lesbians within the military.
The President sets the tone of the nation, and is commander-in-chief of the military, and the tone he is setting is one of hand wringing that lends credence to the erroneous view that there are two legitimate sides to this issue of "integration," and that mere tolerance will one day be required of troops toward openly gay and lesbian military personnel. And requiring mere "tolerance" under these conditions is likely to place Gay military personnel at further risk of discrimination.
The "retraining of current troops," and this kind of delaying tactic, is a death by a thousand cuts, and is virtually guaranteed to heighten the likelihood of assaults and even murders of gays and lesbians within the military.
The President sets the tone of the nation, and is commander-in-chief of the military, and the tone he is setting is one of hand wringing that lends credence to the erroneous view that there are two legitimate sides to this issue of "integration," and that mere tolerance will one day be required of troops toward openly gay and lesbian military personnel. And requiring mere "tolerance" under these conditions is likely to place Gay military personnel at further risk of discrimination.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
ON THE NEED FOR INTACTNESS AND AUTHENTICITY
A good friend of mine wrote the following to me: "It seems to me that in order to fulfill the love-your-neighbor Commandment, we've got to love ourselves to begin with, don't you agree? This is where many LGBT folk fall short."
I wrote the following response to him: The last part is definitely true. Regarding the rest of this sentence, I would substitute "intactness" rather than "loving ourselves," as many contributions have been made by people who have low self-esteem, who don't love themselves, but who sublimate that lack and use it to love others, and do good for others. It seems to me that one can not love themselves and yet still be intact and authentic and do inestimable good for others.
In the many years I have been an LGBT activist I have found that relatively few Gay people are concerned with the quest, the needed fight, for equality. Rather, their concentration seems to be in having a fulfilling social life, and in dealing with manifest or latent shame associated with being Gay in a homophobic society.
Moreover, the manifest or latent shame of many Gay people often exhibits itself in risk-taking, hedonistic, and assorted self-destructive behaviors that neither ease nor release anyone from the existential angst that exists from not fully accepting oneself, often despite one's rhetoric to the contrary, as he/she truly is.
I don't believe that loving oneself is necessarily desirable or essential to living a good and productive life. However, being emotionally intact and authentic is essential if one is to demand full equality for oneself and for others; for living the good life, the life that contributes in such a way that the world is better off for having that person in it.
Exodus 23:2 states: "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil...." To be good is the major component of living the good life!
As the late Rev. Peter J. Gomes states in his book, The Good Life: Truths That Last In Times of Need, "Be gentle and kind. Be simple in your tastes and sincere in your actions and let everything you do and say be governed by this timeless rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'"(p. 50)
I might add that one must be intact and authentic to live the good life, and that the good life consists of fighting for the dignity and rights of oneself and others; meaningful and effective activism cannot exist unless one possesses that intactness and authenticity that enables and makes possible for us to engage in that good and essential fight for equality.
It seems to me that so much psychic energy of many LGBT people is directed toward social activities that act as pleasant diversions because that needed intactness and authenticity are under the surface, and are kept under the surface, by that very emphasis on those social activities.
Clearly, I'm not suggesting that social activities are to be avoided. Rather, I'm suggesting that very often those activities may have replaced meaningful activism due to the fear of expressing the needed intactness and authenticity that are essential traits to have full equality become a reality in the foreseeable future.
So, how do we acquire and exhibit that needed intactness and authenticity? We acquire those traits by fully and finally understanding that God did not make any mistakes when God created LGBT people!
LGBT people are an essential part of God's creation, and the world would not be in alignment with God's intention or desire if LGBT people did not exist! That's the reason that LGBT people exist in the first place!
It takes emotional strength to be intact and authentic when ignorant and/or hateful clergy and others view Gay people as merely being "perverted heterosexuals!" But once we realize that that assertion is one big lie, often propounded by dysfunctional and malevolent people, we have come a long way to recognizing that we have only one life to live here on earth and we'd better be true to ourselves by being intact and authentic.
As my friend Rev. Troy Perry stated: "We are not here to prove ourselves to the world. We are here to be ourselves in the world."
Intactness and authenticity comes about when LGBT people finally and fully realize the truth of this statement, and the fact that God deliberately, and by design, created LGBT people who have added so much to the world in keeping with God's design for this world.
I wrote the following response to him: The last part is definitely true. Regarding the rest of this sentence, I would substitute "intactness" rather than "loving ourselves," as many contributions have been made by people who have low self-esteem, who don't love themselves, but who sublimate that lack and use it to love others, and do good for others. It seems to me that one can not love themselves and yet still be intact and authentic and do inestimable good for others.
In the many years I have been an LGBT activist I have found that relatively few Gay people are concerned with the quest, the needed fight, for equality. Rather, their concentration seems to be in having a fulfilling social life, and in dealing with manifest or latent shame associated with being Gay in a homophobic society.
Moreover, the manifest or latent shame of many Gay people often exhibits itself in risk-taking, hedonistic, and assorted self-destructive behaviors that neither ease nor release anyone from the existential angst that exists from not fully accepting oneself, often despite one's rhetoric to the contrary, as he/she truly is.
I don't believe that loving oneself is necessarily desirable or essential to living a good and productive life. However, being emotionally intact and authentic is essential if one is to demand full equality for oneself and for others; for living the good life, the life that contributes in such a way that the world is better off for having that person in it.
Exodus 23:2 states: "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil...." To be good is the major component of living the good life!
As the late Rev. Peter J. Gomes states in his book, The Good Life: Truths That Last In Times of Need, "Be gentle and kind. Be simple in your tastes and sincere in your actions and let everything you do and say be governed by this timeless rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'"(p. 50)
I might add that one must be intact and authentic to live the good life, and that the good life consists of fighting for the dignity and rights of oneself and others; meaningful and effective activism cannot exist unless one possesses that intactness and authenticity that enables and makes possible for us to engage in that good and essential fight for equality.
It seems to me that so much psychic energy of many LGBT people is directed toward social activities that act as pleasant diversions because that needed intactness and authenticity are under the surface, and are kept under the surface, by that very emphasis on those social activities.
Clearly, I'm not suggesting that social activities are to be avoided. Rather, I'm suggesting that very often those activities may have replaced meaningful activism due to the fear of expressing the needed intactness and authenticity that are essential traits to have full equality become a reality in the foreseeable future.
So, how do we acquire and exhibit that needed intactness and authenticity? We acquire those traits by fully and finally understanding that God did not make any mistakes when God created LGBT people!
LGBT people are an essential part of God's creation, and the world would not be in alignment with God's intention or desire if LGBT people did not exist! That's the reason that LGBT people exist in the first place!
It takes emotional strength to be intact and authentic when ignorant and/or hateful clergy and others view Gay people as merely being "perverted heterosexuals!" But once we realize that that assertion is one big lie, often propounded by dysfunctional and malevolent people, we have come a long way to recognizing that we have only one life to live here on earth and we'd better be true to ourselves by being intact and authentic.
As my friend Rev. Troy Perry stated: "We are not here to prove ourselves to the world. We are here to be ourselves in the world."
Intactness and authenticity comes about when LGBT people finally and fully realize the truth of this statement, and the fact that God deliberately, and by design, created LGBT people who have added so much to the world in keeping with God's design for this world.
Friday, April 22, 2011
STONEWALL UPRISING ON "AMERICAN EXPERIENCE," MONDAY ON PBS
This coming Monday on PBS, the program,"American Experience," will feature the film: STONEWALL UPRISING. Here is a preview of that film:
Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.
Monday, April 18, 2011
CLOSET-ENABLING IDIOCY, BY DON CHARLES
DON CHARLES WROTE THIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE THAT I HAVE HIS PERMISSION TO POST HERE:
Hi, sugar! How'd you like a taste of undiluted Gay shame? Check out the comments section of the 14 April edition of Advocate Online, and sample its bitterness:
. . .why is it a requirement to let everyone know what your sexuality is? Does your sexuality have to be out (in) the open for everyone to see and hear? Whatever happened to privacy? Sexuality is a very personal thing for many people. I don't believe you have to be a flag-waving, card-carrying homosexual(sic) to be inspiring. There are many people who are Straight and are inspiring to the community.
God forbid that we "card-carrying homosexuals" should invade the privacy of heterosexual folk by making them admit to being Straight! How despicably barbaric, when everybody knows keeping sexual orientation secret is normal human behavior.
You cannot fairly ask people to sacrifice their careers and become martyrs for the sake of advancing Gay rights. Public figures might lose their popularity, and ultimately their jobs, if they are openly Gay . . . trust me, discrimination remains very, very real in the business world and in many other sectors of society.
Sustained popularity is promised to no one, especially not people living dishonest lives . . . and exactly how does a public figure's act of remaining closeted make discriminatory conditions get any better? Or don't we want them to get better?
So what would you have these people do? Come out and then find themselves waiting on tables for the rest of their lives? Well, you might have them do that if you yourself are waiting on tables, which is easy for you because your relatively low socio-economic status means that nobody gives a damn whether you are Gay or not.
Last I heard, waiting tables was a respectable way to make a living. I didn't know food service jobs were the default punishment for "outed" rich folks, either. Dude's snobbery is showing . . . I beg his friggin' pardon! He can go sell that classist crock of sh*t to the thugs who periodically threaten me and other working-class Lesbians and Gay men just for looking like we might be homosexual. Somehow, they've forgotten to reserve such abuse for the rich and famous!
In most cases, I believe it is wrong to out people. People stay in the closet in various situations for a variety of reasons, and this needs to be respected, in my opinion . . . certain family members who I trusted told my grandparents that I was Gay without my permission. So I know how it feels to be outed to certain people, and it is not a good feeling.
If this guy swore his relatives to secrecy, maybe he's got reason to feel betrayed; but if he didn't, then he's got no right to get all swollen up over their candor. All too often, we expect others to keep confidences that we've never asked them to keep! At worst, we think they should automatically lie for us; at best, we assume they'll never reveal what they know or suspect. Even if family members do promise silence, we're awfully naïve to trust them. The old adage about a secret no longer being secret when three or more people share it is especially true about Gay identity; somebody is always going to know, even if nothing is said. So-called "gaydar" has never been exclusive to Gay individuals!
"Outing" anyone (who is) minding their own business is as sanctimonious as blatant homophobia. How often one masturbates per day or how much toilet paper one uses to wipe one's voided bottom is intensely personal information that does not belong to the self-appointed judgement(sic) of self-serving journalists. Who gave (anybody) the "right" to decide anyone else's choice to (have) privacy? Oh ye of little minds, you are doing exactly what society has been doing to us for centuries; for the common good, you protest. Sanctimonious jerks, the lot of you!!
In my time, I've heard homosexual status compared to a lot of nasty things, but comparing it to wiping your ass really takes the prize for repugnance! And of course, masturbating and talking about homosexuality are the same thing; how could I forget? Ye of little minds? Was that pompous outburst an attempt to make tortured reasoning sound cultured? I think I'd rather be a sanctimonious jerk than a ridiculous one.
. . . suppose your neighbor has a terminal disease, and tells everyone about it, going around raising money and awareness to fight (this) disease, and to gain more social acceptance of their plight. Then your neighbor finds out that you have had the same affliction all these years, and is furious that you never told them, or joined the campaign, because they think it is your responsibility. You prefer to keep your medical history to yourself. Do you have the "right" to keep (it) to yourself, or does your neighbor have the "right" to share your private medical history with the rest of the world?
Let's not even discuss how infuriatingly offensive it is to compare LesBiGay orientation to terminal illness; if I got started doing that, Lord help me, I might not stop! Let's just focus on how this hypothetical scenario doesn't apply to the matter at hand.
The matter at hand is Out Magazine's decision to list several "glass-closeted" notables in its annual Top Fifty Most Powerful Gay People edition. The Advocate, Out Magazine's sister publication, decided to solicit opinions on whether shattering glass closets is appropriate. The editors certainly got the controversy they asked for, but it was a lopsided furore; as shown by the previous quotes, negative reactions far outnumbered positive ones. Consensus thought is often wrong, though, and this poll is a perfect example.
Anderson Cooper, Matt Drudge, Barry Diller and the other not-officially-Gay power brokers who were listed don't acknowledge their same-gender-loving status, but they do little or nothing to conceal it, either. If these men behaved more discreetly, their orientations wouldn't be subject to media speculation. They're nothing like a cancer patient who takes pains to keep his medical history secret; they're obviously not cowering in fear of exposure. Anderson Cooper takes for granted that the press won't report on his household set-up or dating habits, but really . . . why should he? Heterosexual public figures expect that kind of scrutiny, and always have.
Anybody who still depends on that old double standard governing press coverage is standing on shaky ground in 2011; the advent of 24-hour digital media has changed the rules of propriety. The days when Hollywood publicists covered up for the likes of Rock Hudson, Danny Kaye and Tyrone Power are all but gone, and today's LesBiGay celebrities should know as much. They've got to watch their own backs! If they're so concerned about how the public might view their love lives, then why do so many of them leave their closet doors ajar? In any case, why should journalists, who are supposed to be truth-tellers, be responsible for shutting those doors behind them?
It is not up to us to "out" someone because we think it's important. There are different reasons why a person may want to remain "in the closet" that you and I may not even begin to understand or even imagine. Coming out is a process, and for some of us, it takes a life time. Famous or not, it's still a hard thing to do to come out to the world (and), more importantly, (to) yourself. The people who we should be "outing" (are) the people who have discriminated against Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people. Maybe that would force them to look at themselves and change their attitude.
Who's being sanctimonious now? The folks who really need to "look at themselves" and "change their attitude" are those who see the truth of LGBT status as something to use as a weapon. Revelation of Gay or Transgender identity should neither be seen as a punishment nor as a reward. It should simply be a statement of fact, with no baggage attached. No, that's not the way most people see it right now, but if we don't begin the destigmatizing process, attitudes will never improve.
The Advocate's online readership offered up excuse after excuse for respecting the "privacy" of celebrity closets, each one as lame as it could be. Retrograde opinions didn't completely carry the day, though. A handful of commenters broke away from the mob and resisted the urge to lynch common sense:
I have a problem with the term "outing" here. Anderson Cooper has a boyfriend; he goes out; he lives an open Gay lifestyle(sic) . . . all of (the) people on this list are "out", just not "media out" . . . (why) second-guess what we should do if we see someone (famous) out (at) a club, or dinner, or wherever, being (as) Gay as the next person . . . (why) say: "Yes, but does that little old lady in Pakistan know he's Gay? I wouldn't want to 'out' him" . . . ? If you want to be in the closet and keep it a secret, then do so. But don't be out and in, and out and in, and expect the rest of us to keep your little secret. This isn't "outing", it's a statement of obvious fact.
Say it loud, brother! Another dissenter made some observations that are even more to the point:
There is nothing wrong with being presumed to be Gay, just as there is nothing wrong with being presumed to be Straight. The information is either correct or incorrect. If the presumption is inaccurate, then the (person) can correct the misinformation. We do not live in a world where all orientations are treated equally, but we ought to (equalize them), and begin by asking ourselves what would happen if the situation were reversed. Would there be the same reaction if a magazine presumed a public figure was Straight?
Certainly not . . .and do you know why? It's because, even in oh-so-radical Gay Rights circles, heterosexuality is still considered superior to homosexuality, and that perceived inferiority justifies a double standard in our minds. Scratch beneath the surface of all of our counter-productive impulses, and you'll always fiind internalized shame! It lies hidden behind our bombastic liberation rhetoric just like a rattlesnake coiled up under a rock. You heard it here!
Too many members of the so-called activist community want to have their cake and eat it, too. They say they crave freedom from heterosexist oppression, yet they jump at the chance to normalize the tools of heterosexism: The hateful epithets, the demeaning stereotypes, the tainted theology, the sexual stigma, and the closet, arguably the oppressor's most effective tool. Folks, if what we're after is just a nicer version of institutionalized heterosexism, an illusion of equality instead of the real thing, then why are we still struggling? It's a waste of time! We ought to shut down the Gay Rights movement right now. We've already achieved that illusion, at least in the Western world.
We no longer practice "the love that dares not speak its name". Oh, no! We practice the love that dares not speak its name when popularity is threatened; when friends or family might disapprove; when big salaries are jeopardized; when the truth can't be used vindictively against a political opponent; when the truth upsets the discriminatory status quo too much. Lord, deliver me! If our current social conditions were a soft drink, I'd name it Justice Zero: All those fattening principles have been taken out! Nothing left but water, NutraSweet, and artificial flavor. Drink up, folks! Hair of the dog that bit you in the ass!
And we've got the nerve to call ourselves heirs to the original Civil Rights movement? No wonder some Civil Rights veterans object so strongly to being associated with us.
Hi, sugar! How'd you like a taste of undiluted Gay shame? Check out the comments section of the 14 April edition of Advocate Online, and sample its bitterness:
. . .why is it a requirement to let everyone know what your sexuality is? Does your sexuality have to be out (in) the open for everyone to see and hear? Whatever happened to privacy? Sexuality is a very personal thing for many people. I don't believe you have to be a flag-waving, card-carrying homosexual(sic) to be inspiring. There are many people who are Straight and are inspiring to the community.
God forbid that we "card-carrying homosexuals" should invade the privacy of heterosexual folk by making them admit to being Straight! How despicably barbaric, when everybody knows keeping sexual orientation secret is normal human behavior.
You cannot fairly ask people to sacrifice their careers and become martyrs for the sake of advancing Gay rights. Public figures might lose their popularity, and ultimately their jobs, if they are openly Gay . . . trust me, discrimination remains very, very real in the business world and in many other sectors of society.
Sustained popularity is promised to no one, especially not people living dishonest lives . . . and exactly how does a public figure's act of remaining closeted make discriminatory conditions get any better? Or don't we want them to get better?
So what would you have these people do? Come out and then find themselves waiting on tables for the rest of their lives? Well, you might have them do that if you yourself are waiting on tables, which is easy for you because your relatively low socio-economic status means that nobody gives a damn whether you are Gay or not.
Last I heard, waiting tables was a respectable way to make a living. I didn't know food service jobs were the default punishment for "outed" rich folks, either. Dude's snobbery is showing . . . I beg his friggin' pardon! He can go sell that classist crock of sh*t to the thugs who periodically threaten me and other working-class Lesbians and Gay men just for looking like we might be homosexual. Somehow, they've forgotten to reserve such abuse for the rich and famous!
In most cases, I believe it is wrong to out people. People stay in the closet in various situations for a variety of reasons, and this needs to be respected, in my opinion . . . certain family members who I trusted told my grandparents that I was Gay without my permission. So I know how it feels to be outed to certain people, and it is not a good feeling.
If this guy swore his relatives to secrecy, maybe he's got reason to feel betrayed; but if he didn't, then he's got no right to get all swollen up over their candor. All too often, we expect others to keep confidences that we've never asked them to keep! At worst, we think they should automatically lie for us; at best, we assume they'll never reveal what they know or suspect. Even if family members do promise silence, we're awfully naïve to trust them. The old adage about a secret no longer being secret when three or more people share it is especially true about Gay identity; somebody is always going to know, even if nothing is said. So-called "gaydar" has never been exclusive to Gay individuals!
"Outing" anyone (who is) minding their own business is as sanctimonious as blatant homophobia. How often one masturbates per day or how much toilet paper one uses to wipe one's voided bottom is intensely personal information that does not belong to the self-appointed judgement(sic) of self-serving journalists. Who gave (anybody) the "right" to decide anyone else's choice to (have) privacy? Oh ye of little minds, you are doing exactly what society has been doing to us for centuries; for the common good, you protest. Sanctimonious jerks, the lot of you!!
In my time, I've heard homosexual status compared to a lot of nasty things, but comparing it to wiping your ass really takes the prize for repugnance! And of course, masturbating and talking about homosexuality are the same thing; how could I forget? Ye of little minds? Was that pompous outburst an attempt to make tortured reasoning sound cultured? I think I'd rather be a sanctimonious jerk than a ridiculous one.
. . . suppose your neighbor has a terminal disease, and tells everyone about it, going around raising money and awareness to fight (this) disease, and to gain more social acceptance of their plight. Then your neighbor finds out that you have had the same affliction all these years, and is furious that you never told them, or joined the campaign, because they think it is your responsibility. You prefer to keep your medical history to yourself. Do you have the "right" to keep (it) to yourself, or does your neighbor have the "right" to share your private medical history with the rest of the world?
Let's not even discuss how infuriatingly offensive it is to compare LesBiGay orientation to terminal illness; if I got started doing that, Lord help me, I might not stop! Let's just focus on how this hypothetical scenario doesn't apply to the matter at hand.
The matter at hand is Out Magazine's decision to list several "glass-closeted" notables in its annual Top Fifty Most Powerful Gay People edition. The Advocate, Out Magazine's sister publication, decided to solicit opinions on whether shattering glass closets is appropriate. The editors certainly got the controversy they asked for, but it was a lopsided furore; as shown by the previous quotes, negative reactions far outnumbered positive ones. Consensus thought is often wrong, though, and this poll is a perfect example.
Anderson Cooper, Matt Drudge, Barry Diller and the other not-officially-Gay power brokers who were listed don't acknowledge their same-gender-loving status, but they do little or nothing to conceal it, either. If these men behaved more discreetly, their orientations wouldn't be subject to media speculation. They're nothing like a cancer patient who takes pains to keep his medical history secret; they're obviously not cowering in fear of exposure. Anderson Cooper takes for granted that the press won't report on his household set-up or dating habits, but really . . . why should he? Heterosexual public figures expect that kind of scrutiny, and always have.
Anybody who still depends on that old double standard governing press coverage is standing on shaky ground in 2011; the advent of 24-hour digital media has changed the rules of propriety. The days when Hollywood publicists covered up for the likes of Rock Hudson, Danny Kaye and Tyrone Power are all but gone, and today's LesBiGay celebrities should know as much. They've got to watch their own backs! If they're so concerned about how the public might view their love lives, then why do so many of them leave their closet doors ajar? In any case, why should journalists, who are supposed to be truth-tellers, be responsible for shutting those doors behind them?
It is not up to us to "out" someone because we think it's important. There are different reasons why a person may want to remain "in the closet" that you and I may not even begin to understand or even imagine. Coming out is a process, and for some of us, it takes a life time. Famous or not, it's still a hard thing to do to come out to the world (and), more importantly, (to) yourself. The people who we should be "outing" (are) the people who have discriminated against Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people. Maybe that would force them to look at themselves and change their attitude.
Who's being sanctimonious now? The folks who really need to "look at themselves" and "change their attitude" are those who see the truth of LGBT status as something to use as a weapon. Revelation of Gay or Transgender identity should neither be seen as a punishment nor as a reward. It should simply be a statement of fact, with no baggage attached. No, that's not the way most people see it right now, but if we don't begin the destigmatizing process, attitudes will never improve.
The Advocate's online readership offered up excuse after excuse for respecting the "privacy" of celebrity closets, each one as lame as it could be. Retrograde opinions didn't completely carry the day, though. A handful of commenters broke away from the mob and resisted the urge to lynch common sense:
I have a problem with the term "outing" here. Anderson Cooper has a boyfriend; he goes out; he lives an open Gay lifestyle(sic) . . . all of (the) people on this list are "out", just not "media out" . . . (why) second-guess what we should do if we see someone (famous) out (at) a club, or dinner, or wherever, being (as) Gay as the next person . . . (why) say: "Yes, but does that little old lady in Pakistan know he's Gay? I wouldn't want to 'out' him" . . . ? If you want to be in the closet and keep it a secret, then do so. But don't be out and in, and out and in, and expect the rest of us to keep your little secret. This isn't "outing", it's a statement of obvious fact.
Say it loud, brother! Another dissenter made some observations that are even more to the point:
There is nothing wrong with being presumed to be Gay, just as there is nothing wrong with being presumed to be Straight. The information is either correct or incorrect. If the presumption is inaccurate, then the (person) can correct the misinformation. We do not live in a world where all orientations are treated equally, but we ought to (equalize them), and begin by asking ourselves what would happen if the situation were reversed. Would there be the same reaction if a magazine presumed a public figure was Straight?
Certainly not . . .and do you know why? It's because, even in oh-so-radical Gay Rights circles, heterosexuality is still considered superior to homosexuality, and that perceived inferiority justifies a double standard in our minds. Scratch beneath the surface of all of our counter-productive impulses, and you'll always fiind internalized shame! It lies hidden behind our bombastic liberation rhetoric just like a rattlesnake coiled up under a rock. You heard it here!
Too many members of the so-called activist community want to have their cake and eat it, too. They say they crave freedom from heterosexist oppression, yet they jump at the chance to normalize the tools of heterosexism: The hateful epithets, the demeaning stereotypes, the tainted theology, the sexual stigma, and the closet, arguably the oppressor's most effective tool. Folks, if what we're after is just a nicer version of institutionalized heterosexism, an illusion of equality instead of the real thing, then why are we still struggling? It's a waste of time! We ought to shut down the Gay Rights movement right now. We've already achieved that illusion, at least in the Western world.
We no longer practice "the love that dares not speak its name". Oh, no! We practice the love that dares not speak its name when popularity is threatened; when friends or family might disapprove; when big salaries are jeopardized; when the truth can't be used vindictively against a political opponent; when the truth upsets the discriminatory status quo too much. Lord, deliver me! If our current social conditions were a soft drink, I'd name it Justice Zero: All those fattening principles have been taken out! Nothing left but water, NutraSweet, and artificial flavor. Drink up, folks! Hair of the dog that bit you in the ass!
And we've got the nerve to call ourselves heirs to the original Civil Rights movement? No wonder some Civil Rights veterans object so strongly to being associated with us.
Friday, April 1, 2011
ON THE NEED FOR A RENEWAL OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)
In this Easter season, when our minds and hearts are directed to the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection, there is another form of resurrection, or renewal, or transformation, that is desperately needed and that we are forced to confront in these dark times that emanate from the increasing secularization of society and the rapid shift to the politics of exclusion embraced by much of the organized “Church.” As the Church has been increasingly and dramatically co-
opted by right wing political forces, we have to ask ourselves why so much of the organized “Church” has been ripe for the picking. How have our thought processes allowed such co-optation; how have our tenacious desires to hang on to our perception of man-made “tradition,” that makes void the Word of God (Matthew 15:3), led us to this state of affairs that endangers the Church as we know it, and threatens to consign us to the dustbin of irrelevancy for much of the world?
Whereas in the past, all of God’s children have cried out in their captivity, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land” (Psalm 137:4), increasing numbers of Christians are asking this question about what has happened to Christ’s Church. Strident voices of fundamentalism have been increasingly heard, shouting down what reasonable voices exist, proclaiming their warped views of God, the Bible, the world, and, undoubtedly, themselves to those both outside and within the Church.
Indeed, these voices have been so plentiful and insistent, that many Christians have come to define those voices as actually speaking for Christianity, even though they preach “war” in the name of the Prince of Peace; preach “morality” in the name of denying others’ civil and human rights that they, themselves, enjoy; preach their one-dimensional view of the Bible, despite the biblical scholarship that exists that contravenes that view; preach personal “salvation” at the expense of social justice for all of God’s children; insist on hierarchical obedience when we are all equal brothers and sisters in Christ.
What is there about our mind-set that has to be renewed so that we can fully become God’s Church and live up to His mandate that we be His representatives bringing love, peace, and justice to a sin-cursed world? It seems to me that there are four major errors in thinking that many professing Christians make that must be changed for there to be a renewal of consciousness that will make the Church an instrument worthy of being God’s representative on earth; enable professing Christians to be in God’s will in fulfilling our ministries until God calls us home.
These four errors in thinking are as follows:
The need to go from “bondage” to “liberation.” We must have a firm understanding of the Gospel. Basically, the Gospel says, “Jesus saves! No buts attached!” No human being or institution enables us to be reconciled to God but Jesus and Jesus alone! We are never to let other people define our reality for us or put us into bondage to their ways of thinking. (Isaiah 2:22; Galatians 1:10)
We are not to ask, “What would Jesus do,” but ask, “What would Jesus have me do?” The Gospel sets all of us captives free, as seen in Jesus’ first pronouncement in His public ministry that quotes from Isaiah 62:1-2): “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the
year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Once we allow ourselves to be in bondage to other people, we are committing idolatry as, by so doing, we are putting God on the back burner of our lives and are seeking to please other mere human beings who are no closer to God than are any of the rest of us. We are not to be in bondage to anyone, or be in bondage to anything in our past, present, or future. For example, I consider Acts 23:1 to be the most remarkable verse of Scripture. Here, the Apostle Paul says, “Brothers, up to this day I have lived my life with a clear conscience before God.” How could he say such a thing? Here’s a man who confesses to be the chiefest of sinners (1Timothy 1:15); he confesses to constantly wrestling with sin that rules in his body (Romans 7:14-25); before he became an Apostle he partook of the stoning to death of Stephen, the first martyr of the Church (Acts 8:1).
How could Paul assert a clear conscience given his past and his acknowledgment that sin reigned in this body? He could make that assertion, because he understood the Gospel better than most of us do today. He knew that the Gospel, the Good news, entailed God’s grace, unmerited favor, to those who trust Him. (See, for example, Romans 5:1-2; Ephesians 2:8-9) He didn’t bother himself about the judgments of others. Indeed, he didn’t even bother himself about judging himself. As he wrote, “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself.” (1Corinthians 4:3)
Only God is our judge, and only God is to be our judge! To go from “bondage” to “liberation,” we must steep ourselves in the Gospel, knowing that God loves us sinners (Romans 5:8); teach that Gospel to others; live out that Gospel in our everyday lives; be assured that for the man or woman of God it is harder to get out of God’s will than it is to remain in it.
Paul knew the only Gospel emanating from the only Christ to be found in history and, hence, despite his past, his struggles, his defeats, he knew that he was in God’s will and could, therefore, have a clear conscience before God. We are to reckon ourselves so liberated and seek to show others that liberation that is to only be found in the grace of Christ.
The need to go from “religion” to “spirit.” In some circles, the emphasis on “religion” is called “churchianity.” Many professing Christians feel that their commitment to God begins and ends with their attendance in their church once a week, and listening to an uplifting, or not so uplifting, sermon. Many regularly even engage in “God talk,” where they feel obliged to act sanctimoniously and have at the ready certain Bible verses that they feel speak to any given problem or issue of the moment.
For example, if someone is suffering, many professing Christians will address the sufferer with the platitude, “God doesn’t give us anything more than we can handle,” or words to that effect. They unquestioningly believe that if their pastor tells them that if they have enough faith, God will heal them of their ills, make them wealthy, heal their relationships, etc. They elevate the pastor and their church as beacons to light the way, and even define their Christian life, regardless of much of the irrationality of so many of these superficial pronouncements in light of the human condition.
What do we say to parents whose baby dies? “It is God’s will!” This statement, which may not be true at all, offers little or no comfort to the grieving parents. What do we say to the Tsunami victims’ loved ones? “God acts in mysterious ways.” Again, little or no comfort to those who have unspeakable grief. The fact is that “religion,” given its bureaucratic, hierarchical, frequently paternalistic and sanctimonious attitudes and utterances to the pains of people who seek genuine solace from God, offers little in the way of comfort. Like all bureaucracies, churches and denominations seek to perpetuate themselves by trying not to offend anyone, lest those offended leave them and take their contributions, tithes, and offerings with them. Hence, many of the insipid sermons given from the pulpits throughout the land that don’t speak to the real issues and struggles of people who look to the Church to be the voice of God in “the thin places” of our lives.
Whatever the importance of churches and denominations, they are no substitute for God’s voice that speaks to each and every one of His children! Churches and denominations are comprised and ruled by mere human beings and, despite the best of intentions, these leaders are no closer to God than any child of God who has committed his or her life to Christ. As I once heard someone say, “The church is the only place where we shoot our wounded.”
Churches and denominations are useful, if their pronouncements and function are consistent with God’s mandate to trust Him and show love to other people. However, they are no substitute for the personal relationship one has with the God of the universe! God is Who He is, and He is forever; we are merely temporary fixtures on the world scene and we are quickly removed from it; we are mere fallible flesh who struggle with the problems of life, just as do “religious leaders.”
Hence, our need for God’s mercy with which He plentifully endows us: “Yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them; often he restrained his anger, and did not stir up all his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and does not come again.” (Psalm 78:38-39)
The Holy Spirit Who indwells all of those who have yielded themselves to God directs our paths, in spite of our sins, our frailties, our failings, to manifest God’s will on this earth. We are to manifest the fruit of the Spirit: “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control….” (Galatians 5:22-23) in our personal lives.
Clearly, as God’s instrument on this earth, the Church as an institution is to manifest these same virtues. Unfortunately, history has shown its pitiful performance in this manifestation. Therefore, Christians are to manifest these virtues in spite of much of the organized Church and even leave oppressive churches and denominations as one way of manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. Sadly, in some cases, by remaining in certain churches and denominations, one becomes unable to manifest such fruit and may well be condemned by other professing Christians for so doing. At that point one has to ask oneself whether “religion” or the prompting of God’s “Spirit” holds the reins of his or her life.
All Christians must echo Joshua’s assertion, “…as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) It may well be coming to a point in the evolution of the Church that the chaff is overtaking the wheat, and that the wheat will see the need to leave oppressive churches and denominations that thwart God’s will for love, liberation, and justice, and form their own worship communities so that they can not only worship the true God, but reinforce each other so
that they can take the message of the Gospel, guided by the Spirit of God, to others, thereby fulfilling the Great Commission as Jesus undoubtedly envisioned it.
The need to go from “self control” to “God control.” So often, we try to accomplish what we think are God’s goals in our own strength, only to find that we are fighting an uphill battle to no avail, and that wearies us so that we no longer want to continue. The Apostle Paul exhorts all of us, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:7-9) We sow to our own flesh when we listen to misguided or venial clergy and others tell us how to live and how to treat others when those admonitions clearly contradict the will of God who unconditionally loves all of His children.
Moreover, in Christianity, as in life, one size doesn’t fit all! Hence, what may “work” for one person, even if it is the will of God for that person, may not work for another person if that same attitude and/or behavior is not in the will of God for that person. There is no one way to live the Christian life, save trusting God over and above seen circumstances, and loving other people! Everything else may be seen to be social and cultural expectations of what are viewed as
“acceptable” expressions of Christianity, and may not be consistent with the will of God for a given person and, indeed, may thwart the will of God for that person. God is not the author of confusion (1Corinthians 14:33), but He does have unique ministries for each of His children that He, and only He, can confirm and enable.
We cannot allow churches and denominations, or even other Christians, no matter how well intentioned they may be, to usurp God’s unique call on our lives. As Paul wrote, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6) We set our mind on the flesh when we look to fleshly wisdom be it from others or from ourselves, to decide on how we are to fulfill our ministries and live the Christian life! All people, whether we recognize the fact or not, are ultimately under God’s control! To whom we’re born, where we’re born, many major incidents that occur in our lives, the decay of our own bodies, interpersonal relations, why we die, when we die, what happens to us after we die, are all in the control of a sovereign God. Much of our reliance of what we think is “self control” is delusional, especially in the important aspects and dimensions of our lives.
The Apostle Paul, echoing God’s revelation to Jeremiah regarding the potter’s house (Jeremiah 18:1-11), wrote, “But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?”
(Romans 9:20-21) We must never chafe under the sovereign choices of God; never let ourselves be deluded that we are our own.
As Paul wrote, “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters.” (Romans 7:23) Indeed, we are also not to become slaves of the illusion that we are in absolute control of our lives, but we are to be yielded to God and let Him have the reins of our life. Indeed, even if one is not yielded to God, He still has control of that person’s life, as seen when the Pharaoh wouldn’t release the children of Israel from the bonds of slavery in Egypt. Scripture records concerning God, “And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.” (Exodus 7:13) The plain sense of the words is that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart! As Christians, we are obliged to give God the reins of our life! He has them anyway!
The need to go from a “time” perspective to an “eternity” perspective. I remember a sign carried by a protester during the civil rights movement in the 1960’s that read, “How can you kill me when I’m already dead?” Paul says the same thing about all Christians: “…I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
(Galatians 2:19b-20); “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:2-3)
We are not to look for the world’s approval; we are not to look for anyone else’s approval. We are to know that God already approves of us because He has already called us to Himself to do a work for Him that, in the heavenlies, transcends time and space. Therefore, we don’t live in “time” but we live in “eternity.”
We are here a very short time! Even if we live to be one hundred years old, it would still be a very short life! When we cultivate this eternal perspective, we won’t unduly care about what others think of us, we won’t be consumed by materialism, and we won’t be gullible and malleable to be used by reactionary, or any other kind of ungodly, forces for their own nefarious ends, and for their own self-serving agendas that enable them to acquire credibility, power, prestige, and wealth on the back of the Church, its people, and of Jesus Himself.
As I once heard it said, “When we are born, we are crying and everyone else is smiling. We are to live our lives in such a way that when we are dying, we are smiling, and everyone else is crying.” When we see that we truly live in eternity and act accordingly, fulfilling our ministries as God has ordained, we can take heart that we have been in God’s will; have
cooperated with Him in His using us for His own, sometimes inscrutable, purposes.
By allowing God to transform our consciousness from bondage to liberation, from fealty to religion to fealty to the movement of the Spirit, from belief in self-control to the reality of a God-controlled life, from having a time bound perspective to our recognition that we live in eternity, we help bring ourselves and the Church that comprises us, with Jesus as its head, into conformity to God’s will for us and for all of His creation. As icing on the cake, by such a
transformation of consciousness, we will be like the guests at the wedding feast at Cana when Jesus, performing His first miracle, turned the water into wine. (John 2:1-11)
After turning the water into wine, Jesus told some people to take the wine to the chief steward. “So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from…, the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’” (John 2:8b-10) In performing this miracle, Jesus saved the best wine for last!
When our consciousness is renewed, or transformed, to be in conformity with God’s will for us and His Church, and we have the integrity befitting God’s Church that shines as a prophetic voice and beacon manifesting the fruit of the Spirit and fighting for justice for all of God’s children, being faithful stewards of the many gifts of life and creation given to us by God, we will be able to smile as we lay dying. While others may cry at our going home, we will be able to smile, knowing that we fought the good fight, we ran the race to the end, we never tired of doing good, we manifested God’s grace to suffering and hurting people, we fought for justice and the removal of yokes of bondage placed by ignorant and/or selfish people on God’s suffering children.
As we smile as God ushers us into His kingdom, we will say to Him, “You have enabled me to climb every mountain that I had to face. You gave me your strength and peace amidst the many storms in my life. You made a way where there was no way. You blessed me with many wonderful gifts in my life. You allowed me to experience your wonderful gifts of love and passion. Despite my burdens, You made it possible for me to fulfill the ministry You ordained for me. But You saved the best for last!”
In this Easter season, when our minds and hearts are directed to the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection, there is another form of resurrection, or renewal, or transformation, that is desperately needed and that we are forced to confront in these dark times that emanate from the increasing secularization of society and the rapid shift to the politics of exclusion embraced by much of the organized “Church.” As the Church has been increasingly and dramatically co-
opted by right wing political forces, we have to ask ourselves why so much of the organized “Church” has been ripe for the picking. How have our thought processes allowed such co-optation; how have our tenacious desires to hang on to our perception of man-made “tradition,” that makes void the Word of God (Matthew 15:3), led us to this state of affairs that endangers the Church as we know it, and threatens to consign us to the dustbin of irrelevancy for much of the world?
Whereas in the past, all of God’s children have cried out in their captivity, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land” (Psalm 137:4), increasing numbers of Christians are asking this question about what has happened to Christ’s Church. Strident voices of fundamentalism have been increasingly heard, shouting down what reasonable voices exist, proclaiming their warped views of God, the Bible, the world, and, undoubtedly, themselves to those both outside and within the Church.
Indeed, these voices have been so plentiful and insistent, that many Christians have come to define those voices as actually speaking for Christianity, even though they preach “war” in the name of the Prince of Peace; preach “morality” in the name of denying others’ civil and human rights that they, themselves, enjoy; preach their one-dimensional view of the Bible, despite the biblical scholarship that exists that contravenes that view; preach personal “salvation” at the expense of social justice for all of God’s children; insist on hierarchical obedience when we are all equal brothers and sisters in Christ.
What is there about our mind-set that has to be renewed so that we can fully become God’s Church and live up to His mandate that we be His representatives bringing love, peace, and justice to a sin-cursed world? It seems to me that there are four major errors in thinking that many professing Christians make that must be changed for there to be a renewal of consciousness that will make the Church an instrument worthy of being God’s representative on earth; enable professing Christians to be in God’s will in fulfilling our ministries until God calls us home.
These four errors in thinking are as follows:
The need to go from “bondage” to “liberation.” We must have a firm understanding of the Gospel. Basically, the Gospel says, “Jesus saves! No buts attached!” No human being or institution enables us to be reconciled to God but Jesus and Jesus alone! We are never to let other people define our reality for us or put us into bondage to their ways of thinking. (Isaiah 2:22; Galatians 1:10)
We are not to ask, “What would Jesus do,” but ask, “What would Jesus have me do?” The Gospel sets all of us captives free, as seen in Jesus’ first pronouncement in His public ministry that quotes from Isaiah 62:1-2): “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the
year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
Once we allow ourselves to be in bondage to other people, we are committing idolatry as, by so doing, we are putting God on the back burner of our lives and are seeking to please other mere human beings who are no closer to God than are any of the rest of us. We are not to be in bondage to anyone, or be in bondage to anything in our past, present, or future. For example, I consider Acts 23:1 to be the most remarkable verse of Scripture. Here, the Apostle Paul says, “Brothers, up to this day I have lived my life with a clear conscience before God.” How could he say such a thing? Here’s a man who confesses to be the chiefest of sinners (1Timothy 1:15); he confesses to constantly wrestling with sin that rules in his body (Romans 7:14-25); before he became an Apostle he partook of the stoning to death of Stephen, the first martyr of the Church (Acts 8:1).
How could Paul assert a clear conscience given his past and his acknowledgment that sin reigned in this body? He could make that assertion, because he understood the Gospel better than most of us do today. He knew that the Gospel, the Good news, entailed God’s grace, unmerited favor, to those who trust Him. (See, for example, Romans 5:1-2; Ephesians 2:8-9) He didn’t bother himself about the judgments of others. Indeed, he didn’t even bother himself about judging himself. As he wrote, “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself.” (1Corinthians 4:3)
Only God is our judge, and only God is to be our judge! To go from “bondage” to “liberation,” we must steep ourselves in the Gospel, knowing that God loves us sinners (Romans 5:8); teach that Gospel to others; live out that Gospel in our everyday lives; be assured that for the man or woman of God it is harder to get out of God’s will than it is to remain in it.
Paul knew the only Gospel emanating from the only Christ to be found in history and, hence, despite his past, his struggles, his defeats, he knew that he was in God’s will and could, therefore, have a clear conscience before God. We are to reckon ourselves so liberated and seek to show others that liberation that is to only be found in the grace of Christ.
The need to go from “religion” to “spirit.” In some circles, the emphasis on “religion” is called “churchianity.” Many professing Christians feel that their commitment to God begins and ends with their attendance in their church once a week, and listening to an uplifting, or not so uplifting, sermon. Many regularly even engage in “God talk,” where they feel obliged to act sanctimoniously and have at the ready certain Bible verses that they feel speak to any given problem or issue of the moment.
For example, if someone is suffering, many professing Christians will address the sufferer with the platitude, “God doesn’t give us anything more than we can handle,” or words to that effect. They unquestioningly believe that if their pastor tells them that if they have enough faith, God will heal them of their ills, make them wealthy, heal their relationships, etc. They elevate the pastor and their church as beacons to light the way, and even define their Christian life, regardless of much of the irrationality of so many of these superficial pronouncements in light of the human condition.
What do we say to parents whose baby dies? “It is God’s will!” This statement, which may not be true at all, offers little or no comfort to the grieving parents. What do we say to the Tsunami victims’ loved ones? “God acts in mysterious ways.” Again, little or no comfort to those who have unspeakable grief. The fact is that “religion,” given its bureaucratic, hierarchical, frequently paternalistic and sanctimonious attitudes and utterances to the pains of people who seek genuine solace from God, offers little in the way of comfort. Like all bureaucracies, churches and denominations seek to perpetuate themselves by trying not to offend anyone, lest those offended leave them and take their contributions, tithes, and offerings with them. Hence, many of the insipid sermons given from the pulpits throughout the land that don’t speak to the real issues and struggles of people who look to the Church to be the voice of God in “the thin places” of our lives.
Whatever the importance of churches and denominations, they are no substitute for God’s voice that speaks to each and every one of His children! Churches and denominations are comprised and ruled by mere human beings and, despite the best of intentions, these leaders are no closer to God than any child of God who has committed his or her life to Christ. As I once heard someone say, “The church is the only place where we shoot our wounded.”
Churches and denominations are useful, if their pronouncements and function are consistent with God’s mandate to trust Him and show love to other people. However, they are no substitute for the personal relationship one has with the God of the universe! God is Who He is, and He is forever; we are merely temporary fixtures on the world scene and we are quickly removed from it; we are mere fallible flesh who struggle with the problems of life, just as do “religious leaders.”
Hence, our need for God’s mercy with which He plentifully endows us: “Yet he, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them; often he restrained his anger, and did not stir up all his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and does not come again.” (Psalm 78:38-39)
The Holy Spirit Who indwells all of those who have yielded themselves to God directs our paths, in spite of our sins, our frailties, our failings, to manifest God’s will on this earth. We are to manifest the fruit of the Spirit: “…love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control….” (Galatians 5:22-23) in our personal lives.
Clearly, as God’s instrument on this earth, the Church as an institution is to manifest these same virtues. Unfortunately, history has shown its pitiful performance in this manifestation. Therefore, Christians are to manifest these virtues in spite of much of the organized Church and even leave oppressive churches and denominations as one way of manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. Sadly, in some cases, by remaining in certain churches and denominations, one becomes unable to manifest such fruit and may well be condemned by other professing Christians for so doing. At that point one has to ask oneself whether “religion” or the prompting of God’s “Spirit” holds the reins of his or her life.
All Christians must echo Joshua’s assertion, “…as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) It may well be coming to a point in the evolution of the Church that the chaff is overtaking the wheat, and that the wheat will see the need to leave oppressive churches and denominations that thwart God’s will for love, liberation, and justice, and form their own worship communities so that they can not only worship the true God, but reinforce each other so
that they can take the message of the Gospel, guided by the Spirit of God, to others, thereby fulfilling the Great Commission as Jesus undoubtedly envisioned it.
The need to go from “self control” to “God control.” So often, we try to accomplish what we think are God’s goals in our own strength, only to find that we are fighting an uphill battle to no avail, and that wearies us so that we no longer want to continue. The Apostle Paul exhorts all of us, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:7-9) We sow to our own flesh when we listen to misguided or venial clergy and others tell us how to live and how to treat others when those admonitions clearly contradict the will of God who unconditionally loves all of His children.
Moreover, in Christianity, as in life, one size doesn’t fit all! Hence, what may “work” for one person, even if it is the will of God for that person, may not work for another person if that same attitude and/or behavior is not in the will of God for that person. There is no one way to live the Christian life, save trusting God over and above seen circumstances, and loving other people! Everything else may be seen to be social and cultural expectations of what are viewed as
“acceptable” expressions of Christianity, and may not be consistent with the will of God for a given person and, indeed, may thwart the will of God for that person. God is not the author of confusion (1Corinthians 14:33), but He does have unique ministries for each of His children that He, and only He, can confirm and enable.
We cannot allow churches and denominations, or even other Christians, no matter how well intentioned they may be, to usurp God’s unique call on our lives. As Paul wrote, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6) We set our mind on the flesh when we look to fleshly wisdom be it from others or from ourselves, to decide on how we are to fulfill our ministries and live the Christian life! All people, whether we recognize the fact or not, are ultimately under God’s control! To whom we’re born, where we’re born, many major incidents that occur in our lives, the decay of our own bodies, interpersonal relations, why we die, when we die, what happens to us after we die, are all in the control of a sovereign God. Much of our reliance of what we think is “self control” is delusional, especially in the important aspects and dimensions of our lives.
The Apostle Paul, echoing God’s revelation to Jeremiah regarding the potter’s house (Jeremiah 18:1-11), wrote, “But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?”
(Romans 9:20-21) We must never chafe under the sovereign choices of God; never let ourselves be deluded that we are our own.
As Paul wrote, “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters.” (Romans 7:23) Indeed, we are also not to become slaves of the illusion that we are in absolute control of our lives, but we are to be yielded to God and let Him have the reins of our life. Indeed, even if one is not yielded to God, He still has control of that person’s life, as seen when the Pharaoh wouldn’t release the children of Israel from the bonds of slavery in Egypt. Scripture records concerning God, “And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.” (Exodus 7:13) The plain sense of the words is that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart! As Christians, we are obliged to give God the reins of our life! He has them anyway!
The need to go from a “time” perspective to an “eternity” perspective. I remember a sign carried by a protester during the civil rights movement in the 1960’s that read, “How can you kill me when I’m already dead?” Paul says the same thing about all Christians: “…I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
(Galatians 2:19b-20); “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:2-3)
We are not to look for the world’s approval; we are not to look for anyone else’s approval. We are to know that God already approves of us because He has already called us to Himself to do a work for Him that, in the heavenlies, transcends time and space. Therefore, we don’t live in “time” but we live in “eternity.”
We are here a very short time! Even if we live to be one hundred years old, it would still be a very short life! When we cultivate this eternal perspective, we won’t unduly care about what others think of us, we won’t be consumed by materialism, and we won’t be gullible and malleable to be used by reactionary, or any other kind of ungodly, forces for their own nefarious ends, and for their own self-serving agendas that enable them to acquire credibility, power, prestige, and wealth on the back of the Church, its people, and of Jesus Himself.
As I once heard it said, “When we are born, we are crying and everyone else is smiling. We are to live our lives in such a way that when we are dying, we are smiling, and everyone else is crying.” When we see that we truly live in eternity and act accordingly, fulfilling our ministries as God has ordained, we can take heart that we have been in God’s will; have
cooperated with Him in His using us for His own, sometimes inscrutable, purposes.
By allowing God to transform our consciousness from bondage to liberation, from fealty to religion to fealty to the movement of the Spirit, from belief in self-control to the reality of a God-controlled life, from having a time bound perspective to our recognition that we live in eternity, we help bring ourselves and the Church that comprises us, with Jesus as its head, into conformity to God’s will for us and for all of His creation. As icing on the cake, by such a
transformation of consciousness, we will be like the guests at the wedding feast at Cana when Jesus, performing His first miracle, turned the water into wine. (John 2:1-11)
After turning the water into wine, Jesus told some people to take the wine to the chief steward. “So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from…, the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’” (John 2:8b-10) In performing this miracle, Jesus saved the best wine for last!
When our consciousness is renewed, or transformed, to be in conformity with God’s will for us and His Church, and we have the integrity befitting God’s Church that shines as a prophetic voice and beacon manifesting the fruit of the Spirit and fighting for justice for all of God’s children, being faithful stewards of the many gifts of life and creation given to us by God, we will be able to smile as we lay dying. While others may cry at our going home, we will be able to smile, knowing that we fought the good fight, we ran the race to the end, we never tired of doing good, we manifested God’s grace to suffering and hurting people, we fought for justice and the removal of yokes of bondage placed by ignorant and/or selfish people on God’s suffering children.
As we smile as God ushers us into His kingdom, we will say to Him, “You have enabled me to climb every mountain that I had to face. You gave me your strength and peace amidst the many storms in my life. You made a way where there was no way. You blessed me with many wonderful gifts in my life. You allowed me to experience your wonderful gifts of love and passion. Despite my burdens, You made it possible for me to fulfill the ministry You ordained for me. But You saved the best for last!”
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