[Vision2020] Homophobia is un-Christian

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (March 12, 2006) Spokesman Review with a special thanks to
Leonard Pitts Jr.

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Homophobia is un-Christian 
Leonard Pitts Jr. 
March 12, 2006

An open letter to Donna Reddick:

I'm writing this for Desiree. She's a student at Miami Sunset Senior High,
where you teach business technology. A few days ago, she sent me an e-mail
recounting an incident that happened on campus last week.

It seems that on three successive days, the morning announcements, which are
televised throughout the school, featured student-produced segments on the
subject of gay rights. On the first day came comments from students who took
the pro position. On the second day came remarks from a counselor who spoke
of the need for students to respect one another. On the third day came you.

You and a few students, actually. One told classmates homosexuality was
"unacceptable in the eyesight of God." Another said gays were "unrighteous."
The coup de grace, though, was you, invoking Sodom and Gomorrah and telling
students homosexuality was "wrong according to the Bible" because God
ordered humanity to multiply, which gay couples cannot do.

Desiree was, to put it mildly, upset. In the e-mail, she accused you of
bigotry and wondered how a gay student could ever again feel assured of fair
treatment in your class. I tend to agree. She also suggested that you
crossed the line between church and state, an accusation about which I'm
more conflicted. It seems to me there's a difference between proselytizing
for a religion and explaining how one's faith has influenced one's opinion.
You're entitled to think what you think, no matter how stupid it might be.

But I'll leave those questions for others to parse. My biggest frustration
lies elsewhere. Put simply, I've had it up to here with the moral hypocrisy
and intellectual constipation of Bible literalists.

By which I mean people like you, who dress their homophobia up in Scripture,
insisting with sanctimonious sincerity that it's not homophobia at all, but
just a pious determination to live according to what the Bible says. And
never mind that the Bible also says it is "disgraceful" for a woman to speak
out in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-36) and that if she has any questions,
she should wait till she gets home and ask her husband. Never mind that the
Bible says the penalty for going to work on Sunday (Exodus 35:1-3) is death.
Never mind that the Bible says the man who rapes a virgin should buy her
from her father (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and marry her.

I'm going to speculate that you don't observe or support those commands.
Which says to me that yours is a literalism of convenience, a literalism
that is literal only so long as it allows you to condemn what you'd be
condemning anyway and takes no skin off your personal backside. As such,
your claim that God sanctions your homophobia is the moral equivalent of
Flip Wilson's old claim that the devil made him do it.

You resemble many of your and my co-religionists, whose faith so often
expresses itself in an obsessive focus on one or two hot-button issues - and
seemingly nowhere else. They're so panicked at the thought that somebody
might accidentally treat gay people like people. They run around Chicken
Little-like, screaming, "Th' homosex'shals is comin'! Th' homosex'shals is
comin'!" Meantime, people are ignorant in Appalachia, strung out in Miami,
starving in Niger, sex slaves in India, mass-murdered in Darfur. Where is
the Christian outrage about that?

Just once, I'd like to read a headline that said a Christian group was
boycotting to feed the hungry. Or marching to house the homeless. Or pushing
Congress to provide the poor with health care worthy of the name.

Instead, they fixate on keeping the gays in their place. Which makes me
question their priorities. And their compassion. And their faith.

If you love me, feed my sheep.

For the record, Ms. Reddick, the Bible says that, too.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in
that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity,
their dignity and personhood,"

- Coretta Scott King (March 30, 1998)