I have had gay friends all my adult life. I have been comfortable with homosexuality for a long time. A few things lately have made it clear to me that a lot of people have very little understanding of homosexuality. I want to make a few points clear.

People are born gay or straight. Many people grow up hiding their sexuality for various reasons, but the fact that they announce they are gay after they are adults, or even after they have had spouses and children does not change the fact that they were gay when they were born. They don’t get converted or victimized into it. Nor do they choose it. It is a very difficult thing they usually struggle with for years before they admit it. They choose when they call themselves gay, but not when they are gay.

This is extremely difficult for many to deal with because it means God created gay people as gay and yet, we are all told God hates homosexuality. To believe people are born gay is to believe that God is a liar or something. What do you do?

The answer is that we live in a very different time than when the Bible was written.  Some things are as true today as they were 4,000 years ago, but many things are not. We don’t take laws set down by God concerning donkeys to literally apply only to donkeys. Things change. In this case, we now know that homosexuality is an inherited trait as much as red hair or black skin. They didn’t know that a couple thousand years ago. Times change. Things change. We have knowledge they didn’t. It doesn’t nullify God’s Law, it amends it. And it gives us the chance to be more righteous and good than the saints and the prophets.

The good news is, homophobic men don’t have to worry any longer that they will turn gay from a hit on the head or perhaps a drunken fling with another gay. You’re straight, get over it.

A lot of very dumb things are perpetrated because of this lack of understanding. Many people are trying to limit knowledge of homosexuality as a means to limit homosexuality itself. They think that if people know about it, it creates it. The truth is, people are gay, and some know what they are and some don’t. When they find out that what they are is gay and there are millions of other gay people, they are relieved and announce what they have always been. To the paranoid outsider they imagine that the knowledge created the homosexuality. That’s as true as finding out that there is something called hiccups and realizing you have them and they are normal. Knowing about hiccups didn’t cause hiccups, it gave it a name and a context.

This is the issue of our time. It is the Jim Crowe era for gay people. They can’t have the legal protections and rights others take for granted. They are ridiculed without consideration. They are mistreated. They are discriminated against. They can work their entire lives with a partner and end up with no rights to share in their life in terms of inheritence, etc. as they would were they straight and married. All these things happen because of the way they were born. Same as skin color. They had no choice and would likely have made a different one if they could. And so they are mistreated because of how God made them.

Be glad you were not born gay in these times. Just as there was a time when simply being born black in this country was going to be a struggle against society, today, being born gay makes you an instant victim.

And much as in those segregation times, the people who have the strongest feelings against gay people, have not been around them. My growing up with black people in my schools and churchs and as my peers and friends made it impossible for me to be a racist as my parents generation was. Having many gay friends lets me see how normal it is and I can’t imagine a reason to treat them as less than equal humans and citizens. But for those who live where no one dares come out of the closet, they are free to continue to imagine that gay people are some monster to be fought. It’s the same way in the all white counties of this country where racism continues to be passed down without being contradicted by the existence of people of color in their lives.

While this guy isn’t specifically saying that God Hates, this is the sort of asshat the pisses me off. This guy and the others that infest public events, spouting that God Hates Fags, liberals, republicans, muslims, all pique my ire.

Assuming for a moment that God is real and not some made up fiction used to perpetuate wars and get rich, how can anyone with bad penmanship and poor social skills claim to know the mind of God? Are they really so enlightened to understand their god so well that they can vouch for his complete and utter hatred of a given group of people?

So for all you people who think god hates people, GOD HATES YOU TOO!

     One of the biggest things that sickens me about many “Christian” groups is their propensity to back up their wicked, hateful ideas with obscure Biblical references.

     By now, most everyone in the country has heard something about the so-called “Reverend,” Fred Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist Church — either heard about him personally, or the work he’s done as an Anti-American (”God Hates the USA!”), as an instigator of violence against homosexuals (”God Hates Fags!”), or as an instigator of hatred against Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Roman Catholics, George Bush, Jews, Women, Rye Bread, Israel.  Carpet, and your next door neighbor’s cat.  And Catholics.  And Jews.  And Fruit Roll-ups.
     What self-respecting Christian could possibly follow an asshat like this?  Apparently, up to about 200.  The number frequently changes, mind you, and could be as low as 15.

     The WBC is labeled a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and is rightfully on the Anti-Defamation League watch list.  The group is so hateful, in fact, that even Michael Moore and the Ku Klux Klan have attempted to counter them.

     He and his “faithful followers” have protested the funerals of U.S. Soldiers, and are now turning their vileness towards victims of Virginia Tech shooting:

WBC will preach at the funerals of the Virginia Tech students killed on campus during a shooting rampage April 16, 2007. You describe this as monumental horror, but you know nothing of horror — yet. Your bloody tyrant Bush says he is ‘horrified’ by it all. You know nothing of horror — yet. Your true horror is coming. ‘They shall also gird themselves with sackloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads’ (Eze. 7:18).

Why did this happen, you ask? It’s simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants.

     But in reading the above, what strikes me most is that Phelps claims that God inspired a man to kill our children as punishment for our country’s involved in Iraq.  When I consider the fact that Phelps has repeatedly been anti-Muslim, I find his credibility in this case pretty weak.  But, apparently, anywhere from 14-200 people (discounting Phelps, himself) are able to ignore that little inconsistency…

     And to debunk it a little further…
     Back in the Garden of Eden, Cain became jealous of his brother, Abel, because he felt that God favored Abel.  While they were out in the fields, Cain killed Abel.  Why didn’t God protect Abel?  Was God asleep while this took place?  Was He on vacation?  Of course not.
     God allows us Free Will.  That was the gift of the Forbidden Fruit.

     There is Separation of Church and State in this country.  Religious Freedom is guaranteed by the First Amendment — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
     What that Amendment means is that they’re not going to come and shut down Mr. Phelps “Church” because his Religion and Free Speech is protected.  Put simply, they stay out of his domain, so long as he and his followers don’t take action on the garbage they’re preaching…

     “The hell with your flag.  The hell with your fag army, your fag courts, your fag-run government,” says Phelps.  “This is the hypocritical, fag-infested, fag-run United States of America and we’re supposed to respect that fag rag flag?”
     Yes, he is supposed to Respect it.  This Country, and that Flag that it represents, are what gave him the right to spread his filth in the name of Religion.

     I would also have them remember that Government will stay out of their Church’s domain only so much as their Church stays out of the Government’s domain.  With every legal line they cross while spouting their politics and hatred, they become less and less a Church, and more and more a Hate Group who spout Bible Verses.

Tips: Slublog, LissaKay

In 1920, our great-grandfather’s generation gave women the right to vote. A basic equality of rights was given to a class of people who were denied simply because of the way they were born. The church was against it. Women are under men. They should be silent. The men are the head of the household. But our nation is based on human equality, not what the church or the majority want. Our grand-father grew up seeing women differently and wondering about the curmudgeon generation that still rants about giving women equal rights.

In the 1960s, our grandparents generation saw the black people get equal rights. The church fought against it. The people fought it. The KKK burned crosses. But, our country is not based on popular ideas or church pulpits, it’s based on the Constitution and the rule of law. All men are created equal, regardless of what skin color they were born with. Black people were granted equal rights. It was the right thing to do. We look at our grandfathers and don’t understand how they can hate people of color and we quietly grumble at their occasional mutterings about “those people.” Our generation can’t imagine withholding those rights to black Americans or women.

Today, our generation is voting en masse to cut the rights of homosexuals. The church rails against it. The average person thinks that because gay men are born with a certain disposition, they are less than human. They are less worthy of rights. Popular votes are taking place all over the country. But that is not what this nation is built on. It’s built on the strong defending the weak and granting them the human, equal rights they deserve, regardless of what the church and the populace may think.

Our children will not look at homosexuals the way our generation does. They will not understand how we could deny equal rights to them simply because of the way they were born. They will roll their eyes as we gripe about the gay people.

We are a bigoted generation. Gay rights is not popular. It is not the churches will, but it is the right thing to do. It is the American thing to do. If you don’t want gay people to marry, you might want to stop those black people from eating at the lunch counter with you too. No? Well, buddy, that’s your legacy.