A CHRISTIAN VOICE FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: CHRISTIANITY AFFIRMS SAME-SEX LOVE

Friday, April 13, 2012

CHRISTIANITY AFFIRMS SAME-SEX LOVE

The following is a slightly edited reprint of my December 21st post:

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! We see this fact in the story of the repentant thief on the Cross. He didn’t have to know the four spiritual laws, didn’t have to get baptized, and didn’t have to confess all of his sins; Jesus didn't ask him if he was Gay or Straight.

And we, too, appropriate God’s 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!

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...: Thank you so much for this post. Recently, I learned that my nephew is gay and I have several gay friends whom I love and spend quite a bit of time with. I always feel a pang of guilt...especially after listening to Christian radio with the topic of the sanctity of marriage. I completely believe that God's word is truth and will have to study it more for myself, but I appreciate your insight; it's really lifted my spirits. I can only imagine the impact believers would have on this world if we would love unconditionally the way God loves us...I don't know why it's so difficult for us to take Jesus' lead...
Anyways, I'm 34 yrs old and will be celebrating my thirteenth wedding anniversary soon. Congratulations to you and your wife and I pray that God will allow us to see our fiftieth as well!; April 24, 2012 at 6:17 PM
Jerry Maneker said...: Thank you so much, Anonymous! My very best wishes, Jerry.; April 24, 2012 at 6:44 PM

FROM "THE CHRISTIAN LEFT"

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

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

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

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

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

Christianity Is A Lifestyle

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

THE BIBLE IS NOT GOD

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

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

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

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

THE CONFUSION OF "HEDONISM" WITH "GAY."

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

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AUGUST 4, 1857

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

A NOTE ON THE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE USE OF PEJORATIVE SELF-IDENTIFIERS

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISM, BY DON CHARLES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, April 13, 2012

CHRISTIANITY AFFIRMS SAME-SEX LOVE

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