Lisa Larges, a lesbian whose most recent attempt to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church has been denied, hits it on the head with a commentary in the Advocate magazine:
Like a colonoscopy or head lice, the word Christian is a conversation killer among LGBTs.
The harsh reality for LGBT people is that if they are people of faith, they face a double-edged sword. They are either scorned and rebuffed by the institutional church, or discussed into oblivion by church committees and subcommittees who work for years and years to come up with statements that hope to appease LGBT people without really giving them the acceptance they seek.
Certainly, we expect the church to push back against LGBT people who have agitated for years for full acceptance in the pew and the pulpit. What hurts the most, however, is when members of our own community scorn and rebuff us for our faith. The comment section following Larges’ excellent editorial is full of voices of detraction:
The author of this article’s imaginary friend likes me. That’s nice. If people are going to have imaginary friends and live in fantasy worlds, then I’m happy that they’re nice. However, gods don’t exist in the real world outside the human imagination, so encouraging GBLT people to find religion is irresponsible. We all have brains, let’s use them. Bronze Age superstitions should have been left in the Bronze Age. – Jerrygod does not love us nor hate us because god does not exist. why do we insist on “claiming back” religion in the first place? the only way to real equality is to get religion out of the picture altogether. so long as religion exists, people will be allowed to claim whatever they like. whether someone believes that “god hates gays” or “god loves gays” is irrelevant to me. they are both delusional. let’s focus on the real world and leave religion in the past where it belongs. – Saul (original spelling and grammar preserved)
It is Saul’s comment that especially captures the crux of the problem for the LGBT community. As LGBT Christians, we’re not arguing for others to believe in the existence of God. Freedom of religion does indeed mean freedom from religion. What LGBT Christians are trying to do is exactly what Saul believes we can’t do: reform religion. To get the “real equality” Saul believes LGBT people deserve isn’t a matter of getting religion “out of the picture altogether.” No civil rights movement has ever succeeded by ignoring or marginalizing religion. Instead, religion needs to be brought along with the rest of society if a movement toward “real equality” is to be achieved.
All movements that have gained equality has honored religion and sought its reform on issues like slavery, equality for women, and equality for minorities like African-Americans. The LGBT community ignores the religious community at its peril. The near strangle-hold that the religious right exercises over the Republican Party should be all the proof any LGBT person or ally needs to understand the depth of the roots of religion in any equality movement.
Instead of bashing LGBT people of faith for their “imaginary friends” and religious delusions, the LGBT community needs to embrace the brave pioneers like Larges who are fighting on what is really the front line of the battle for “real equality” for our community. As the old quote, often attributed to Gandhi points out, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Without the leadership of Larges and others who have gone before her like Bill Johnson, the first openly gay man ordained by the United Church of Christ in 1972, the church would still be ignoring gays and lesbian in their midst. The fact that the church has moved from ridiculing us to fighting us only goes to show that LGBT people are ever closer to a victory in the church.
Larges understands that the bridges LGBT people of faith need to build are not just to the church universal, but within the LGBT community as well. In that spirit, she offers a challenge:
But it will take all of us. Taking a page from Sarah Silverman, if you grew up in a faith tradition, go back to your family, your church, synagogue, or mosque and talk about these issues. Challenge them on what they are doing to make the church more inclusive. Let them know, and know for yourself, that Scripture and theology do not teach homophobia, transphobia, intolerance, or bigotry. Remember the young people who are sitting there hearing the messages of exclusion and judgment that drove you out the door. Our movement needs political, economic, and spiritual strength.
The message to the LGBT community should be clear: You don’t have to believe in our “imaginary friend,” but it’s imperative that you support LGBT people of faith in their struggle. Because, when we win the church (and we will), the path to “real equality” for all LGBT people will be made clear.
Tags: anti-religion, atheism, lgbt, presbyterians, richard dawkins, the advocate
I have subscribed to a couple atheist blogs, not because I agree with them, but because I want to listen and learn. What astounds me is the amount of venom that is spewed in the comments therein. (I do recognize that those who don't have a political agenda or angry energy to release, are less likely to write on internet blogs dedicated to such things.)
I have read on many LGBT blogs the same kind of hate. Usually it is focused on conservative/anti-gay church people, but sometimes is oozes onto an LGBT person of faith. In so many of the comments the words are not constructive, but are simply name-calling and mocking:bully behavior. Does that help the LGBT community? It helps as much as it does for skinheads to yell slurs at Jews or African Americans...it just causes more hate and derives little respect for the abuser.
I wonder about those that make so much noise. Why is it important to fight against People of Faith? I wonder if it stems more from the abuse of the church than from another's belief in a diety.
Church abuse, real and perceived, is almost certainly part of it.
I think there is another component. The creationist website Answers in Genesis often quotes Jesus as saying "Whoever is not for me is against me" (Forgetting that on another occasion he reversed it to "Who is not against me is for me")
In the case of groups of people the saying becomes "Whoever is not like us is against us." And of course it becomes somewhat irrational. Maybe the wider LGBT community is suspicious of people of faith because they believe that we could be closer somehow to the faith community than to the LGBT community.
Or perhaps they are also suspicious of LGBT Welsh Nationalists or LGBT Bikers or - you name it.
After all being bisexual is only one component of my spiritual and intellectual identity. I can't leave the rest of the package behind when I'm concerned with equality for LGBT people. I can try to be all things to all people but there is still a "me" in the middle with all my qualities quirks and foibles. You may not like some of them - I don't like some of them - but they are part of me just as my faith is.
My impression is that a person who finds faith in God important is going to find it important to reconcile that faith with their LGBT status and form a theology which accommodates it. A person who does not find faith important is going to find it easy to leave theology in general behind altogether, with no interest in reforming it. It takes a special kind of person who can bring themselves to a sustained worship of a deity that they actually believe hates them and will send them to hell. Jerry and Saul are, in effect, making the following propositions:
1. You can change your own theology, but it's foolhardy to think that you can change someone else's if their theology is what makes them hate you in the first place.
2. Even if you could change theirs, it's not something to bother to do since theology is all crap anyway-- whether it favors you or not.
The fact that they believe #2 is why it wouldn't matter to them if #1 is actually true or not. To them, promoting a gay-friendly God would be a useful fiction at best, and strategic dishonesty at worst. And it's hard to keep up strategic dishonesty if you're a person who believes that it's important to speak what you believe, and that God has nothing do with whether LGBT people are deserving of the same rights that everyone else has. Even if it's true that no civil rights movement has succeeding by ignoring religion, that doesn't mean that this one can't be the first, and in the cases of people like Jerry and Saul it doesn't matter anyway since they can not do otherwise.
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