Querido Hermano Jarryd,
What you describe is a human universal, not something localized to Christianity or even religion as a whole. Humans will turn on each other. Humans will betray and hurt one another, whether due to simple ignorance or through malicious intent.
In my homeland (Cuba), when the Communists came into power, many gay people rejoiced as they thought that Guevara and Castro would embrace them and they would be free to come out of the closet. Many of them were even officials in the revolutionary government.
But they were burned. Ernesto Guevara was among many things, as homphobic as he was theophobic. The tribunals at La Cabana were host to once loyal communists who were tried, found guilty, and executed (right next to religious people, afro-cubans, and intellectuals) for the “crime” of being gay. Castro himself ordered homosexuality to be not only outlawed, but also to force any homosexuals who were “caught” to choose either death or a sentence in one of Cubas work camps (where a regimen of conversion therapy was force fed to homosexual prisoners along with back breaking labor in the hopes of making them “true cubans”). Things have calmed down a bit since Guevara’s death and Castro’s illness (though guardsmen can and will still arrest gay Cubans in the quest for a bribe, and being openly gay puts you at risk of trumped up “improper conduct” charges, which carry a 5 year with hard labor sentence).
Same thing in China. Same thing in North Korea. Though those countries tend to “solve” their “problem” by making those they view as “deviant” , simply “disappear” into prisons, their bodies dumped in mass graves like so much garbage, their families threatened into silence.
Even in the “free world”, being burned by those who should know better is widespread in the secular world. How often have people who should be allies with F2B in the struggle for LGBT rights spat upon us or defamed Mr. Brown ? How often have both Liberals and Conservatives promised gay people the world, only to put them under the bus (even to the present minute)?
So no. I do not blame the church. No more than I would blame the Democratic party, Karl Marx or certain Gay Rights groups. I blame humanity. I blame human arrogance and desire for control and power. I blame willful ignorance and outright prejudice. I blame the hunger for personal victories over collective good. I blame the ills of a fallen world and a species who is often too weak willed to rise above it.
When I see a church that turns it’s back on the LGBT children of God, I also see political groups that do the same, I also see advocacy groups that do the same. I see something beyond the organization: I see a sin that stretches it’s claws and burrows deep into the bones of all human endeavors.
Only by uniting all souls to a common purpose and reaching out to our common humanity can we hope to challenge such pervasive evil.
I pray that God will grant us all the strength to see it through to the end.
Yours in Christ,
Raul
|
