Thursday, April 16, 2009

Divide And Conquer

All arguments aside about whether being gay is a sin or not - what about those Christians who take it upon themselves to persecute gay people?

We could debate another year, and for another year people who call themselves Christians and who yet hate gay and trans people could reject all evidence to show gay and trans people are as natural as heterosexual people, as well as rejecting all reasonable religious alternatives to the choice some make to hate or to love us in the name of the same God we also love and who also loves us. But let us put that aside for a moment, and narrow it down to response.

How do you as Christians respond to other people?

By this I mean that you don't see crowds of people in the streets for example at religious rallies baying for the blood of gamblers, drunks and men caught cheating on their wives - crying "they are an abomination before God!" and holding signs that say "Gamblers Burn In Hell". You don't read about people calling themselves "Christian soldiers" while "drunk-bashing" or murdering obese people, do you?

You don't have campaigns by religious groups aimed at inciting hatred against alcoholics - and therefore campaigns by alcoholics to have hate crimes protection included in the Constitution - and then also religious campaigns to block aforementioned laws because they "infringe on freedom of religious expression"? While alcoholism is seen as a sin, it is also recognized as an illness, but that is another matter for another debate.

As some say "homosexuality is not a special sin" - sure, gay and trans people are not perfect, and according to Christian doctrine, we have sin as all others do. "For ALL have fallen short of the glory of God", etc. But for some reason gay-hating groups single us out and make us "special". 
 
Why are these groups not targeting liars, gamblers, thieves, fraudsters, adulterers, pedophiles, and other 'sinners' as enthusiastically and in as organized, hateful and plainly vindictive a manner as gay people?

Drunken layabout fathers (or mothers) are not singled out as threats to the all-important (and largely fantastical) "family unit" - and for some reason, the people who preach hate against others (and divide families by causing polarization around the "gay issue") are for some reason not called "threats to civilization". Why is that?

These groups target specifically gay people. They use us as a specific rallying cry to bring their groups together. We are being singled out as scapegoats and being blamed by religious personalities for all manner of ills, including even the bizarre claims by American ex-gay groups at the recent Uganda Homosexuality Conference such as "gay people caused the 1994 Rwanda genocide". This sort of unfounded claim is not only disturbing, but in the light of the mechanisms that propel genocides, it is downright dangerous!

I think these comparisons provide some stark revelations, don't you?

To me it means that while these groups may frown on their faults, those others are not hated - or at least not hated as much as we are. For some reason, while the Bible equates all sin as being equally bad, it seems the Flock appears to believe that some sins can be turned a blind eye to, while others should be singled out and vilified and persecuted.

Do you not see this as a disproportionate and unreasonable response? Do you not see the hypocrisy? Does this not reveal something seriously wrong with the leadership and dogma of the religious bodies persecuting us?

It seems that trying to get a bigots head around this knotty problem is almost as complicated as doing algebra using Roman numerals - which in itself is nigh impossible.
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