Zinnia Jones

Via Queerty:

In a shot, the video of a toddler singing there “ain’t no homos going to make it to Heaven” went around the blogosphere. Now the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Indiana has issued a statement on their website.

The Pastor and members of Apostolic Truth Tabernacle do not condone, teach, or practice hate of any person for any reason. We believe and hope that every person can find true Bible salvation and the mercy and grace of God in their lives. We are a strong advocate of the family unit according to the teachings and precepts found in the Holy Bible. We believe the Holy Bible is the Divinely-inspired Word of God and we will continue to uphold and preach that which is found in scripture.

So, what possible reason is there to say that gay people will literally be tortured forever, without this being at all hateful? I’m genuinely curious. Let’s get creative here - surely there must be some kind of rationale for this!

In a recent post on his website Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera criticizes so-called “pro-family leaders” for focusing on issues such as gay marriage while neglecting to oppose homosexuality itself. Citing the need to emphasize “WHY homosexual and transgender behaviors are always wrong”, “how homosexual sex is fraught with health risks”, “why homosexuality violates Natural Moral Law, the teachings of Judaism and Christianity”, and “the inordinate drug and porn use among homosexual men, and ‘gay-on-gay’ assaults and abuses”, he says:

Simply put, we as a movement must conquer whatever timidity, fear and political correctness we have in NOT wanting to debate the morality of homosexuality - because our fanatically-driven LGBT opponents will never relent in their audacious campaign to “sell” homosexuality to the public. Notice that while many conservatives shrink from the homosexuality debate, self-described out-and-proud “queer” activists never back-track in their misguided, indeed, pathological quest to compel society to approve of their aberrant “lifestyles.”

LaBarbera gives little thought to why this might be the case, but the answer should be obvious to anyone who isn’t consumed with self-righteous loathing for gay people. There certainly is a reason why the mainstream anti-gay movement does its best to avoid openly attacking us for being drug-addicted rapist sinners, and that’s because most people just don’t want to hear it.

Over 50% of Americans personally know someone who’s gay, and this figure holds true among liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Those who do know someone gay are more likely to support gay marriage and the legality of gay relations. Knowing gay people puts a human face on what would otherwise only be an abstract concept of what gay people, their relationships and their “lifestyles” are like. Without any actual firsthand experience, their understanding of us remains foggy and vulnerable to rumor, suspicion and distrust. Familiarity serves to ground this in reality - a reality which LaBarbera and his colleagues have dedicated themselves to fighting against.

What is it that makes these personal connections and interactions so effective at humanizing us in the eyes of the public? Many in the anti-gay movement seek to diminish our struggles in a historical sense by asserting that sexual orientation is nothing like one’s race or color. But in one crucial respect, this is absolutely true.

The fact of our sexuality does not visibly manifest itself in an easily recognizable way, with the unfortunate side effect of the superstitious marking of certain appearances or mannerisms as “gay”. While this has often resulted in plenty of anti-gay abuse being directed at young children and anyone who strays even slightly from established norms, it has also deprived people of any certainty about who among them might be gay. Our sexuality does not afford them the opportunity to recoil from our very skin the moment they lay eyes on us. It’s something they must come to learn.

In no small part because of a pervasive history of societal homophobia, many of us have been reluctant to share the truth about ourselves with anyone but those we trust the most: our good friends, neighbors, co-workers, and hopefully our families. By the time we feel comfortable enough to come out to them, this can spark an extraordinary shift in perspective, because these people have already come to know us, appreciate us, and love us for who we are - not what we are. When faced with the fact that the wholesome and upstanding person they respect and care deeply for also happens to be gay, this goes a long way toward dispelling any misconceptions, including the vulgar lies of anti-gay activists. Our own lives testify to the truth.

So how do you think our families and friends will react when Peter LaBarbera’s partners in homophobia such as pastor Patrick Wooden claim that gay men use gerbils and baseball bats sexually and “die in diapers”? What will they think about the notion that our very love should be subject to criminal sanctions and we’re going to burn in hell? How will they feel about baseless accusations that gay people are pedophiles and even orchestrated the Holocaust?

These wildly hateful confabulations may serve to rile up the anti-gay base, but this is utterly repulsive to anyone who knows us. Does LaBarbera really expect people to believe that their loved ones are actually child-molesting Nazis? If he thinks his moralistic bloviations can take precedence over our humanity, then we can only hope that even more anti-gay groups will follow his lead. He’s just given them a lesson in how to drive their movement directly into a brick wall.

If I can’t accept you, can you not accept me?

The post title isn’t entirely true. I accept you just not your choice. I love you even though I have never met you. I am a christian. I believe that Jesus Christ being fully man and fully God, gave himself for our sins. I have been practicing my faith for 6 years. I am not a biblical scholar by any means, but I know a little bit. I know that the bible condemns homosexuality. I believe that it is wrong. I believe the practice of homosexuality is a choice.

I have watched videos and read articles about homosexuality. I see the truth in your eyes when you tell me you are born this way and this is who you are. I watched the Google video of “It Gets Better” and my heart breaks. The thought of you wanting to take your life pains me and I wouldn’t want that for anyone.

So here we are at a crossroads. I cannot accept the practice of homosexuality. I accept and love you but my God tells me that what you are doing is a sin and I choose to listen. If you want to hang out, have dinner, be friends, talk, need help moving, etc, I am down. But you know how I feel. How do you feel about me?

I regret if this is hurtful to you, because I really wish you weren’t stuck in the situation you’re in, but the god you think exists really doesn’t. At the very least, there is no actual evidence to suggest its existence. If the man called Jesus was real, there is no reason to think he was in any way divine, and the Bible is simply a collection of ancient writings that encapsulate the very human morality of the age. There is no reason for anyone to automatically accept it as an authoritative definition of what’s moral or immoral, any more than you would view the Qur’an as an absolute and final moral guide. What you consider to be God “telling” you anything, is nothing but the product of mankind and its own fallible opinions.

I feel it’s necessary to tell you this because of the effects that such beliefs have on the world, and the rest of us who live in it. This is not a mere matter of opinion when it’s used to justify inflicting harm on people’s lives, like mine and my friends. It is something you are doing without a shred of evidence to prove that what you do is right or appropriate in any way.

You’ve seen the It Gets Better videos, and you know what drove us to make them. You may not want us to kill ourselves, but how do you think a person feels when they’re told that their love for someone is in fact such an utterly repugnant thing that the very maker of our world, who you believe gave his own life to save us all, would reject their loving relationship as something so inadequate it constitutes an intolerable offense?

What would it feel like to you, if in the event that you ever loved anyone in your life, anyone at all, it would always be considered that wrong, that ugly, that evil and offensive and disgusting? What if a considerable portion of society - your fellow parishioners, your co-workers, the people you thought were your friends, even your own family - made it frequently and vividly clear to you that they think your love for someone is unbearably vile?

Imagine if they were talking about the love that you feel in every fiber of your being, the love that you know is true and beautiful and the most uplifting thing you’ve ever felt in your life, the love that binds you and entwines you with your beloved and makes it so simple to know that you’re going to spend the rest of your lives together. Imagine that, degraded and insulted as something so lowly it’s offensive to the creator himself. The one who made you - who made you who you are, a human being who wants nothing but to be allowed the love that everyone else is entitled to.

Imagine if society felt so strongly that your affections are wrong, that they forbade any mention of them during your entire compulsory education. Any notion that you could one day find someone to love, someone of the gender you prefer, would be immediately quashed - and any suspicion that you yourself might harbor such proclivities would make you the target of unending, hateful mockery from your own classmates. The harassment is so ceaselessly furious, and it’s all aimed at you - when you’re only a kid. Where did your peers learn to treat you like that? It’s because they know people like you are nothing but failures to God himself. Worthless.

And even once you make it through that hell on earth and enter the world beyond school, you’ll find that all the people who were raised to hate your kind are still around, out in force, more energized than ever, high on their own collective revulsion toward people like you. So they start passing laws to legally mark you as something less than they are, something that doesn’t deserve the same kind of recognition and affirmation as they do. Maybe they’ll allow your employer - any employer, for that matter - to fire you simply because of who you are. Maybe they’ll allow businesses to specifically refuse to serve you. Maybe they’ll try to keep you away from anything that might involve being around children, since for some baffling reason they’re certain that you might abuse them.

Maybe some of them will start to feel it’s acceptable to assault you, or beat you, or rape and violate you, just because of who you are. You’re nothing but God’s reject. Some of them might decide to just kill you. Or, if not you, someone like you - maybe a friend, maybe not. It doesn’t matter; the message is clear: Your life is not safe. After all, you’re not even worthy of the same respect as everyone else, so maybe your own life isn’t that important, either. God’s own trash. That’s all you are.

Now suppose that the reason you find yourself in this nightmarish, unthinkable situation is because the great raging masses of society that so viciously despise you are convinced that an invisible, imperceptible being has officially designated you as an evildoer. They know this because they insist they can detect the will and intentions of this being, either by having its own desires directly inserted into their own brains via forces unknown to us, or by analyzing the contents of a very, very old book.

Upon reading the book, you find that it’s nothing more than the cobbled-together writings of mostly unknown authors from millennia ago, massaged together into a somewhat consistent series of events with a vaguely coherent storyline - if you really make an effort to see it as such. And, fundamentally, you realize that there’s simply no reason why the great being that’s so venerated by everyone else would actually be real, merely because this strange book happens to discuss it. You know there are many books which talk about many things, many different kinds of beings or other characters - but you know these stories aren’t a description of the reality we live in. Not at all.

You may be inclined to discuss this with believers who insist this being is quite real. But, when pressed, they’re evasive or even aggressive towards you, and the answers you do get out of them don’t make much more sense than the book itself did.

And you start to see, that after all the pain you’ve been through, the hatred heaped upon you for most of your life by the rest of society, the exclusion and isolation and vilification that’s been stabbed through your very heart… it was all for nothing. No reason. Nothing but millions upon millions of people who think they’re following the wishes of something that isn’t even there. You’ve been so despised, so deeply wounded in your life, reviled by the world - your own friends, murdered - in the name of an idea that could never even be proven.

How do you think you would feel about all of that?

I may see that you are a decent person in most areas of your life. I may recognize that you usually treat others kindly, work diligently, support your family and love them genuinely. And I realize that you’re a person who, honest to goodness, thinks they’re just doing the right thing.

But as long as you hold a belief that who I am is a moral violation and who I love is a mortal sin, as long as you hold such a dehumanizing and life-denying belief based on no credible evidence whatsoever, you are presenting a problem. You and your fellow believers are causing very serious problems for me and those whom I love dearly. Yes, you are hurting me - but more than that, you’re hurting my friends. And I don’t think you have any idea how much it pains me every day to see the evil at work in our world, the hatred that’s literally killing us, all because of beliefs like yours.

But I wish you did. Because as long as you’re unwilling to let go of this terrifying, terrorizing belief, this pernicious, malignant mistake, this annihilator of life itself… I will not be able or willing to view you as a good person.

I cannot accept that.