you will find it here http://gayambassador.blogspot.com/2011/02/open-letter-to-peter-madden-cdp.html

Dear Peter

How big is that hole you are digging for yourself at the Christian Democratic Party headquarters?

Your YouTube video “Heal Our Land – Stand for Righteousness”, calling for a shutdown of Mardi Gras ‘anarchy’, as you call it, has caused quite a stir. I am sure you were unaware of the backlash this would create. 20 likes and 700 dislikes, on YouTube, possibly give you some indication of the success of your campaign.

The mindset and language in the video reflects a culture of over 20 years ago (1989) when The Rev. Fred Nile, with several hundred Christians, walked up Oxford Street in a ‘cleansing’ march. Far from that being an act of cleansing Oxford Street from the homosexual menace, Australian society has become more accepting of diversity and many of the inequalities experienced by gay and lesbian people have been addressed. This is not so in some areas of the Christian Church however. History tells us the church rarely leads positive change but in fact often opposes it. Equality for people of colour, interracial marriages and the role of women in the church are just some examples. To enter the political arena you will need to be more in touch with relevant issues.

Like many people who criticise the Mardi Gras parade, you seem to lack understanding of its significance, history and positive impact on the City of Sydney. Far from being a celebration of G-strings, sex toys and debauchery, as you’ve said, it’s a celebration of pride and acceptance for a group of people who have suffered for decades because of their own and society’s ignorance about sexual orientation and gender diversity. Homosexuality is not a sin, it’s an orientation.

Your heterosexuality is celebrated every single day with weddings, engagements, anniversaries, baby showers, christenings etc., so surely it’s not too much to ask that we celebrate who we are once a year.

Summarising your initial video the words, ‘sensationalist’, ‘fear-mongering’ and ‘stereotyping’ come to mind.

I am referring to statements such as:

• “100,000’s of drunken youth will come to Sydney streets and be incited to all kind of lust, filth and moral depravity”

• “Mardi Gras is Sydney’s high day of sexual immorality”

• “Hyde Park will be strewn with the bodies of drunken teenagers. 13, 14 and 15 year old children, celebrating watching and participating in forms of sex they can’t understand.

• “Mardi Gras is a parade of live porn”

• “There will be beatings, drugs, alcohol, violence and debauchery”

• “This is not an attack on bruised and confused individuals”

Am I to assume the last comment is about gay and lesbian individuals or are you referring to the 100,000’s of drunken youth? I don’t think that that the majority of the LGBT community or well respected figures such as Olympian, Matthew Mitcham, political leaders like Penny Wong and Bob Brown or former High Court Judge Michael Kirby see ourselves as bruised and broken. This is not only untrue it is highly offensive. I will resist the temptation of returning the favour by labelling you.

If you intend developing a career as a politician, can I suggest that you will have to stop talking like a militant, emotional, preacher behind a pulpit and begin talking facts and act more like a normal, informed person.

As if you hadn’t done enough damage…… then you post another video; A Response to Comments on Stand For Righteousness. Wasn’t the hole big enough?

I think most people struggle with the truth of your protests of “not being homophobic”, “you don’t hate homosexuals but that you actually love them”. The fact that you, like Fred Nile, refuse to use the term gay or even our increasingly cumbersome acronym, the LGBT community, is a reflection of your lack of respect for us. Your statement the other day that you “love the sinner but hate the sin” is nothing more than a tired, hackneyed cliché and a cover up. We hear the hate but we don’t see the love.

BTW… I do have something to thank you for.

Your video has incensed a number of ministers, feeling that our community might think you represent the Christian church, and they have contacted me, asking if they can march with Freedom 2 b[e] in this year’s parade. This happened in 2008 when 100 (The 100 Revs) Evangelical and Pentecostal ministers signed an apology and marched in the parade to say sorry for the way the church had treated so many of us. The ministers were moved to tears that day by the ovation of the crowd and the hospitality shown to them by our community.

I think an apology from you is also in order for the misrepresentation of our community and parade.

Peter, I don’t see you as the enemy. The enemy is ignorance. The kind of ignorance demonstrated in your videos and shows that your understanding of sexual orientation, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and LGBT people as a whole is sadly lacking.

Sincerely

Well done, AVB.

I like a quote in an unrelated letter in today’s paper, attributed to Charles Darwin, viz .. .. ..

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”

Peter Madden demonstrates all the bluster and bravado and hyperbole which goes with the CONFIDENCE that he thinks that he is right.

Now that he has some KNOWLEDGE courtesy of his meeting with AVB and – no doubt – lots of other communications, it will be interesting to see if his confident (or ‘cocky’) approach softens.

[I realize now that I knew him way back in the old CLCS (now Hillsong City) days. Will try and find time to write to him to add to his ‘education’.]

Thank you AVB for responding to Peter Madden’s YouTube ‘Calling to Christians.

Years ago, I heard a preacher say to a youth group that he wanted to be known for what he stood for, and not about what he stood against. It is a pity that Peter Madden does not just try to represent all that Jesus Christ stood for in the New Testament accounts of his life on earth, that we read about in the Bible, and not try to be the ‘catalyst’ for some sort of ‘cleansing’ process within Australian society and the Christian church.

Years earlier, I also heard the comment that the difference between those who identify as Christians and those who don’t, is that a ‘Christian’ has been diagnosed and have been admitted to a place where they can be treated i.e. the positive and healing presence of God. Over time, I began to realize that this comment for me reflected a simple truth – Christians are not better or more perfect than a non Christian. The reality is that our lives, Christian or Non Christian are a journey. We haven’t reached a place of perfection that allows us to judge our fellow man or woman. Only God offers a journey to righteousness in him, and it will never be our position to make that initial or final assertion that one man or woman is or is not acceptable to him.

I came to the conclusion many years ago, that when people in the church think that they have reached a point of ‘revelation’ and ‘righteousness’, they forget that as human beings, that they are made up of a whole suite of values, concepts, emotions, behaviours, etc, that DO NOT simply disappear out of our lives. Hence, men and women and children who call themselves Christians exhibit attitudes and behaviours, that are simply wrong, for a long time – even sometimes, sadly, their whole lives. We only need to look at recent history in many of the key countries in the West to see how racism was accepted and even promoted within the various dominations of the Christian church for several generations, and to know that ‘ignorant’ men and women present what is wrong ‘inside the church’ as ‘all that is right’.

On the other hand, too many Christians, forget that Jesus ate with Tax collectors and prostitutes – people in society that represented the ‘unlovable’ in society at that time – and he stood against the self righteous members of the religious community – the Sadducees and Pharisees, because of their hypocrisy, and because they had strayed so far from God’s vision of ‘his people’, in their pursuit of religious doctrine and social conformity to their perception of a ‘life of righteousness’. These Sadducees and Pharisees were often prepared ‘to throw the first stone’, even though their lives were far from perfect.

As Christians, we have so many versions of the Bible to choose from. During my teens, 20s and early 30s, I read the NKJ, and often read the words that Jesus was ‘moved by compassion’ or words to that effect. These were found to describe his response to those who suffered from all sorts of sickness, disabilities, social intolerance or isolation, etc.

Maybe one day Christians like Peter Madden will move away from their own fear of the unknown and their own ignorance.

I firmly believe that the Christian church – its leadership and the individual members within it, needs to look at itself before it starts pointing the finger at the society and segments of that society around them. A church is not made righteous because of its own self – it is only made righteous through Jesus Christ and because it represents God and not a whole set of questionable values, concepts, emotions, behaviours, etc that DO NOT represent the Jesus Christ that I know.

Ok – I will get off my soap box now. 🙂

Is it actually worth responding to people who are as extreme as that? Or does it only add legitimacy to their views? Just curious about people’s thoughts.

Also, anyone want to head over to Martin Place and stir them up when MG comes around? /jk 😉 :p

BTW….everyone….this is a new place for me……mostly all my work has been one on one behind the scenes in dialogue…..I am on the edge of my paradigm http://gayambassador2.blogspot.com/