Time to Talk About Gay

With Indiana passing a so-called bill to protect religious liberties, all the talk is about how the law allows discrimination against gay people in the name of religious freedom. Actually, the US Constitution (the Bill of Rights) guarantees freedom of religion. The individual states do not need to augment the ‘freedom’.

Indiana doesn't think so. So they took the ‘law’ into their own hands and made sure that one thing in particular would now be illegal: discrimination against gay/lesbian/transgender/bisexual/queer people is now fully legal. Indianan’s don’t have to discriminate; the law merely allows them to if they want to.

Evidently there are many people in the state that believe all issues gay are a clear and present danger to them and they believe their religion/theology/church teaches them that gay is bad therefore a target of good people.

Jesus did not think so. He never said a word about gay or homosexual matters. Ever.

Old Testament and New Testament writers – in the first case, hundreds if not thousands of year before Jesus’ time, in the latter 200 and more years after Jesus’ death – have written about matters that can be construed to be about homosexuality. Actually more contemporary readers interpret the Bible this way. And of course these readers believe they know what the biblical passages mean, were meant to mean, and what weight they hold for all followers of the Bible. Not followers of Jesus, apparently, but of the Bible. Their expertise apparently remains in that specific area of religion.

I don’t wish to be cynical here. It is just easy for me to be so given my circumstances.  You see, I am gay. Male. Once married for nearly 26 years. Father of two kids and grandfather to three. I’m almost 72 years old. I've lived my life searching for what is true – in my life, in my brain, in the books and education surrounding me, in the culture, social sciences and physical sciences that further surround me. I've questioned everything. I've been a seminarian (for a year). I've studied at one college, and two universities. I have cultivated an open mind and theorized on just about everything.

Yes I am an open mind and an open book.

What I am not open to is hostile judgment from others who simply don’t understand what they are talking about.

If they are people of faith, they would know their blather is off their own theological track. If they asked their pastors, ministers, priests and authorities in their churches and denominations they might discover just how far off their track they have become. In some instances, of course, people as ignorant and lazy as they are will agree with them. Why else would there be so many fundamentalist, evangelical and home-grown churches that helped steer Indiana lawmakers into making their misguided laws?

Even the Roman Catholic Church has got it wrong for hundreds of years. Why? Because they are afraid. Afraid of their own male hierarchy and sexual abuse crisis to admit they don’t know or understand what the gay issue is all about. Instead they rely on dogma and ancient rites to guide them.

Using such ancient guides is like allowing the ignorant to teach the blind and deaf. Not much understanding is likely to result. And yet close to a billion people are catholic and they know not what they are doing. That phrase is as fresh as when Jesus was supposed to have uttered those final words on the cross!

He was right of course. They didn't know what they were doing. And yet he forgave them, as well as God the Father forgave them. That is the entire message of the New Testament. At least for Christians, supposed or otherwise. God allowed his son to live among normal everyday people and further allowed them to kill him so they would see that God loved them, forgave them, and supported them.

Unlike the Indiana legislature. But then they are politicians not theologians. And US court decisions for some time now have mandated separation of church and state. Because the state simply couldn't understand or wouldn't understand what theology is all about. It certainly is not about making laws governing morality and religion.

Matters of conscience are like that. They are supposed to guide how the person lives and gets along with others who don’t understand him. Conscience is about you; or me; not we. Am I right with God? Am I taking care of my own spirit, belief, wellness, what all? Or am I busy about what others are doing, what’s right with them?

Indiana legislators don’t get it. Their governor doesn't get it no matter how hard he tries to redefine up and down, gravity and common sense. A wordsmith he is not. Nor a theologian. Just a politician.

I feel sorry for Indiana. It does not know what it is doing. It is likely to pay a high price for this ignorance but their history has shown that ignorance will protect them from feeling guilty about it. They will just wonder why others are laughing. And looking at them. And driving through or around their state without stopping.

How very sad.

All they had to do was ask some gay people to talk about their stories. They might have learned a lot that also would have helped them learn more about their own religious beliefs. They still can.

April 2, 2015