Speaking out

This week a friend of mine was deeply hurt, while sitting in a house of G…d – a place of worship and safety, a place that should be welcoming and filled with love. Instead of compassion, mercy, and understanding, she received hate speech of the most vitriolic kind. It made me want to cry for her, and it made me horrified that this has happened so much that I can no longer cry about it. Instead, I am angry. Desperately, horrifically angry.

Leviticus 19 tells us that we must love the stranger as if ze was home-born among us.

Deuteronomy tells us that we must remember our alien status in Egypt and love the stranger, as we were also strangers.

The Gospel according to Matthew tells us twice that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

The Gospels of Mark and Luke repeat this injunction, with Mark going as far as to say that there is no other commandment greater.

Romans, Galatians, James, Philippians, Hebrew and Ephesians all speak to how we are called to love.

Again and again scripture tells us to love. Instead, what the LGBTQ community is often shown is hatred, outright lies, disdain, and venom. We are accused of being child molesters, crimes against nature or possessed by Satan. We are called unnatural, unintended, and not part of Adonai’s Creation. We are accused of destroying families, adopting children so we can “make” them gay, and of perverting the scriptures.

We are accused of these things in our homes, in our churches and synagogues and holy spaces. We are faced with this venom systematically and continually, and in the name of Adonai. We are attacked so often that many of us flee from our religious homes. We are condemned so frequently that we become numb to it, unable to muster the tears that should come with poison, instead shrugging out shoulders and saying, “this is the way the world is”.

We keep our mouths shut, worn out from the constant fight against hate, unable to enter the battle one more time. We find ourselves saying over and over again that the people who hate us “just don’t understand” and that they “need love and grace too”.

They do. I am not arguing against that. However, I find myself at a point where complacency is no longer an option. I find myself at a point where keeping my mouth shut is no longer an option. I am tired. I am tired of sucking it all in, and moving on with my life.

It is time that we stood up, took up the shields and swords of battle, and refuse to be silent anymore. It is time that we fight for the pronouns we want. It is time that we go public about the hate mail we receive, and it is time that we bring it into our churches, our synagogues, and our houses of faith.

The houses of G…d are holy places. They are places where the will of G…d should reign. Instead, they become places where hate speech is covered up, where we are told to “stay in dialogue and remember that” the person spewing venom at us “is in need of grace too”. The holy places are being corrupted by pastors who refuse to speak out against hatred, instead claiming, “everyone is entitled to a diverse interpretation of the scriptures”.

I agree that everyone is entitled to hir own interpretation of scripture. Read it however you want to. However, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said “the right to swing my fist ends where the other [person’s] nose begins.” Hate speech is hate speech and it must be removed from our holy places. A person, fully entitled to their own interpretation, is not entitled to spew that venomous interpretation in our places of worship. It is time that pastors, priests, imams, and rabbis stood up and cared more about removing the poison from our lives than they do about membership, money, and positions.

Scripture calls us to love. It calls us to care for all people. It does not, however, call us to bring scorpions into our beds. Sometimes love is hard. Sometimes love is sharp and painful. And sometimes, love means taking care of ourselves, loving ourselves enough that we are willing to speak.

It is time that we, the Queer community, bring to light the hatred being brought to us under the guise of “spiritual healing” and “Christian love”. It is time that we stop allowing people to use the excuse of wanting to “save us” as a cover for their condemnation of our lives. It is time that we temper the call we receive to have grace and understanding for those who hate us with a steely resolve to bring that hatred to light, instead of sucking in the poison and hoping it doesn’t kill us.

Gay Marriage and the "Judeo-Christian" Myth

This was written by my friend Greg Griffey; I found it both powerful and important, and wanted to share.

Gay Marriage and the "Judeo-Christian" Myth

Ask a sampling of U.S. citizens if gay marriage should be legalized and you will likely get a diversity of opinions. Some are supportive, others not. Some make arguments in between, suggesting for example that every couple should receive a civil union under law regardless of gender pairing and the sacred connotations of “marriage” should be left to religious communities. It is rare, however, at least among the people I call my colleagues and friends, to ask such a question without getting into a discussion about biblical notions of sexuality. “God says it’s a sin.” “I’m not judging gay people but I don’t support their lifestyle.” “I love the sinner but hate the sin.” “God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality.” “God’s ideal is one man and one woman. Besides, gay couples can’t procreate.”

In the context of gay civil rights in the United States, these kinds of religious arguments suppose the myth of the “Judeo-Christian nation.” “Our nation was founded on ‘In God We Trust,’” some argue. The term “Judeo-Christian” in reference to the United States is a misnomer, however, given the fact that in our nation’s history Catholics, Jews and others were excluded from naturalizing as U.S. citizens or at least held with great suspicion on the basis of their Jewish and Christian identifications. Perhaps it would be more accurate to argue that the U.S. was (and in many ways still is) a nation of very European Protestant paradigms and privileges (with forms of deism in founding documents), but never some homogeneous “Judeo-Christian” state.

It’s one thing to oppose gay marriage on the basis of one’s religious beliefs; it’s quite another to drag isolated biblical passages into a conversation about gay civil rights under the United States Constitution. If we are going to appeal to selected biblical passages and the "Judeo-Christian" myth when discussing civil rights and law, then we could make it illegal to eat shrimp and pork; to wear a garment with different types of cloth; women could be the legal property of their husbands; men could have multiple wives; and slaves could be forced to obey their masters. Yet many of those who oppose gay civil rights on biblical or "Judeo-Christian" grounds would not likely support the legalization of slavery, polygamy, or the criminalization of people who consume pork or shrimp. (Although some would probably support slavery on biblical grounds, as their forebears did before emancipation.)

Religious-based discrimination enshrined into the laws of the United States ignores the religiously pluralistic landscape of our nation. People of faith have every right to add or forbear their blessings on same-sex marriage. However, while I am no Constitutional scholar, it seems to me to enshrine discrimination into the laws of our pluralistic democracy based on appeals to biblical passages is both unethical and unconstitutional. "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion."

Furthermore, if marriage is as sacred as Christians claim, then why are we so quick to hand over its definition to a secular state? Why do ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ willingly become agents of the state, rendering the things of God unto Caesar by signing marriage licenses for the state? Why do we not instead forfeit our privileged state-agent status by putting "marriage" where it belongs: in sacred spaces and communities of faith rather than in the hands of secular government? Perhaps because we would rather live with the myth of a “Judeo-Christian" nation and all the real and supposed privileges that come with religious establishmentarianism when the established religion is our own.