Facing the False Fronts of the Right Wing

I am getting sick and tired of the attacks on religious freedom that have been popping up lately-- FOX News proclaiming that President Obama is trying to "cleanse the military of Christians" because proselytizing is not allowed on military bases (even thought it has been that way for decades), "pro-life" adherents claiming that President Obama and liberals 'love murdering babies', the constant spin from the "Moral Majority"-esque religious right against the ever-present "threat of the gay agenda", and the publicly-allowed bashing of Jason Collins (the NBA player who recently announced in public that he is gay) by ESPN commentator Chris Broussard, the pandering politicians who want to 'restore America' to a fantasy time that never existed when the land was governed by "Christians" and "Biblical truths", and, for that matter, even the numerous signs that litter the local landscape exhorting us to "Protect Religious Freedom"-- these are all symptoms of a malaise that has spread across the entire country but the truth is, these scenes are nothing but ploys of the right wing to place themselves behind a facade of Christian faith so they can portray themselves as "God-fearing" folk when in fact they are merely bigots who want to redefine what all Americans are supposed to believe to fit their personal, godless agendas.

First of all, if you have to redefine words and 're-educate' people through constant propaganda, you're not on the right side of the fence.  This is true for ANY religion, not just Christianity.  When something has to be 'tweaked' to fit into mainstream faiths, it is a cult-- whether that  is Scientology, the Unification Church, Black Hebrew Israelites, or, for that matter, Mormonism.  And when it comes to re-defining words, it doesn't have to be church-related: take the words "pro-life", used to identify people who are against abortion. (A large section of the 'pro-life' movement is funded by the Catholic Church, so there is strong religious element to this movement.)  I loathe the term because of it's blatant (but weak) attempt to create division where none should exist.  By that, I mean, who is 'pro life', really?  I would say 99.99% of people are pro-life-- that is, nobody except for a very few psychopaths, are 'pro-death'.  If the people the 'pro-life' adherents said were actually 'pro-death', the world would be a totally different place, and I dare say 'pro-death' people really abounded like the 'pro-life' people claim, 'pro-life' people would not be able to make any public protests out of fear for their own lives. Just because I don't think I have the right to dictate to women how they should think or behave does not mean that I wish death on whatever fetus they may be carrying. I don't know the circumstances that led to a woman's pregnancy.  I don't know the health history, social history, educational record, or what have you of a pregnant woman, nor do the conservatives who claim that women 'deserve rape'  The worst part about the conservative 'pro-life' movement, beyond their 'if you're not with us, you're against all life' attitude, is their attempts to tie their conservative, bigoted beliefs to the teachings of Jesus Christ.  By that, I mean that they seem to believe that, if you're 'Christian' in their eyes, you MUST be 'pro-life'. Sorry, Charlie, but Jesus Christ never said anything about abortion, for one; but as a Christian, I don't feel I have the right to sit in judgment on women and what they do with their bodies; as a Christian, having known what it is like to be forgiven for my sins, I know I  have no grounds to stand on when 'pro-life' groups demand we line up to stone the accused for the error of their ways.

The fact that these right-wing conservatives are willing to shut out large sections of the populace also does not sit well with me.  The attempts by churches to demonize homosexual people for centuries is a significant problem in my embracing the churchgoing folk in their quest for spiritual dominance.  It may be hard for you to believe, but I am a 'born again' Christian, and have been since the age of 38 (and I'm now 51)-- but my understanding of how God works does not jive with what I see in the words and deeds of the churchgoing folk. I've been to many churches in these past 13 years, and what I've seen leaves me saddened in regards to the state of the Christian faith. Some of the churches I visited proclaimed to be 'inclusive', meaning that they accept homosexuals as 'brothers and sisters in faith', but in my experience, many churches fall short-- and I mean VERY short-- when it comes to accepting gays and lesbians (and, in some cases, people of other races, people who have different views, etc.)  The truth remains that most Christians are unwilling to believe that a homosexual person is 'truly' Christian if they do not outright renounce their sexuality, or conform to certain expectations regarding behavior (a statement to the effect that you remain celibate while you wait for God to change your orientation to that of a heterosexual.)  The Catholic Church will even go as far as banning you from participating in Holy Communion if you are 'actively gay'. Prayer groups at the  'inclusive' churches will stand together in prayer to 'pray away the gay', and ask that God 'deliver' the gay individual from their 'demon', or their 'sin'. And this is why Chris Broussard felt it was perfectly OK to say that Jason Collins-- who is a devout Christian, by the way-- should 'repent' for being gay. 

That's a very strange demand to make on a person, but it happens all the time in churches across the world. Being gay is an integral part of a person's identity, just as being heterosexual is. It's not a choice, no matter how much the conservative part of society would love you to believe it is. Making it a choice is a cop-out, actually, for by doing so, that means that the gays and lesbians did something bad, and all others are released from having to deal with a scientific truth.  You can thus cling to your bigotry and homophobia, and it gives you the right to feel superior because you did not 'go down the wrong path', you are not the one 'walking in disobedience to God', and so on.  But the truth remains, that homosexual people will still be here, and no matter how many prayers are sent up to God, homosexuals always have been, and always will be here. It won't matter if all active homosexuals are rounded up and put into concentration camps-- because it's not the homosexuals who give birth to more homosexuals-- it is the heterosexuals who create homosexuals.  More and more will 'come out'; and this will be true no matter how long the conservatives fruitlessly try to push back attempts to legitimize marriage equality, the scientific fact remains that gays will always exist. 

Conservatives vainly try to redefine 'marriage' as being between a man and a woman-- note the singular-- and refer to the Bible as basis for their belief.  But then, they seem to have forgotten the story of Solomon, the wisest and wealthiest king in the Bible who had many wives and concubines.  What a great example of a man who was not walking in obedience to God... Or what about Abraham, the 'father of the faithful', who had three wives- Sarah, Hagar and Keturah?  And Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes, had four wives: Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah.  And Moses-- well, he had Zipporah, but he also (gasp!) married a black woman-- an Ethiopian. And of course, let us not forget the beloved David, who had at least eighteen wives and ten concubines... and he loved Jonathan as well.  So, in the conservative Christian world, it's perfectly OK to demonize a man who, having learned in Sunday School that one of the greatest commandments is to 'love one another', falls in love with another man to the extent that he wants to marry said man and legitimize his spousal status, all because of some strange homophobic fear (or is it jealousy?) and to claim that couple are 'in disobedience' to God...

What amazes me when it comes to homosexuality, is how low people will stoop to demonize the gay and lesbian people in the world, when in actuality, God is perfectly fine and actually quite accepting of gay and lesbian people. How do I know this?  Simply because it is my story.  It wasn't any particular person who led me to Christ, although I know one person who would like to claim it was him, as if it helps him score points on a salvation scale or something. And no, it wasn't me trying to be score 'goodness points' before I die, either.  To be honest, I was not seeking God out.  I was perfectly capable of living without God in my life, and had for over twenty years. It was God who, unannounced, sought me out; and when God came looking for me and knocked on the door of my heart, I was surprised.  At first, I didn't understand it, because I thought God neither cared about me or wanted to have anything to do with me but I found out I was wrong.  And after I felt the healing, loving embrace of God, and knew my soul had been cleansed, the blinders had been removed, and the shackles of ignorance had fallen away, I bawled uncontrollably while on my knees... The power in the touch of Jesus coursed through me, and it was like nothing I had ever experienced before, and I was awestruck. It was the first of many such encounters, and I treasure them immensely. And it is this feeling I remember when some person claiming to be Christian makes an anti-gay remark; this is what stirs up the anger within me, because I know that the homophobic individual has NOT encountered Jesus Christ like I had, for if they had encountered Christ like I had, how could they not know what God is capable of?  And if they don't know what God is capable of, what, I ask, gives them the right to proclaim their anti-gay stance based on their 'Christian faith'?!?  Any true Christian knows there are no grounds to stand on for throwing stones at others.

It is the right-wing element in our society that most commonly conflates the Christian faith with their ideology, which is not even remotely based on Christian principles, but instead centers itself around capitalistic greed,  yet the gullible masses lap it up.  The real problem behind this is that the agenda of the right is to strip people of everything we believe in.  The right wing claims our society is in danger of imminent collapse because of one of more of the following: a 'failed public education system', the 'liberal mass media', the 'gay agenda', 'government spending', the 'socialist healthcare system' the 'corrupt unions', or their proposed 'fact' that 'God is removed from our school systems/military/government/sports events'. None of this is true, but these things will never be removed from the right-wing propaganda.  But it is precisely this right-wing ideology that truly presents our greatest problem.  They want to place the blame for what ails 'the country' (when they perhaps mean their control of the country) on the various elements listed above, when the true source of the ailment is their own policy failures.  The facts show that, when it comes to the government spending, it is the right-wing administrations that generate uncontrolled spending sprees, mostly on bolstering the already over-inflated defense budget; any failure of public school systems is most likely due to budgetary cuts made by the right on schools that have already been forced to cut back on funds allotted to provide quality education when a cut in our bloated military budget could easily pay for better schooling; the 'liberal' mass media is surprisingly full of right-wing voices, including FOX News, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Pat Robertson, and the voices on the right have even infiltrated entertainment channels, such as ESPN, as was recently seen in Broussard being allowed to openly criticize Collins on the air for not following Broussard's own standards for Christianity; and while Rupert Murdoch's tabloid news may fare well with the British, his attempts to sensationalize everything to maximize profits goes against the very tenets of his own network to be 'fair and balanced' in presenting the news, but in his blatant criticism of President Obama for any and everything he is willingly distorting the truth and turning a portion of the media into an untrustworthy and unreliable source of information, best used for comedy fare on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report.  The tactic is scarily devious-- for if we cannot trust the news media, then our sources of information become less reliable, and if our sources of information become unreliable, it becomes harder to distinguish truth from opinion, and thus it becomes easier to swallow the propaganda when a person on television tells the viewer that gays have a specific agenda, that the Founding Fathers meant to establish the U.S. as a "Christian nation", that separation of Church and State was not a good idea, that the government is plotting against you and stealing hard-earned money from rich people (most of whom have never worked a day in their lives) to enrich the slothful poor.

But when it is all said and done, it is the call for "Religious Freedom" that really annoys me.  Having had some experience as a Buddhist monk, I can appreciate the sense that we all want to be free to follow the religion we believe, and understand that it was the intent of the Founding Fathers to provide us with that.  I understand the frustration of certain Europeans, who, after centuries of wars in Europe over truly trivial religious matters, fled their lands to come to these shores. But the thing is, the "Protect Religious Freedom" signs I see around me have nothing to do with guaranteeing religious freedom for all or even freedom FROM religion. The signs are equivalent to the "Don't Tread On Me" signs of the Revolutionary War and are, in effect, a statement against 'government tyranny'.  The signs are meant to convey that the posters want the government to back off from making them comply with such things as providing prenatal care or birth control pills to young women or sex education courses, which the Church is obviously wiling to conflate with abortion and/or promiscuity, or to provide evolution-based science courses because it isn't in alignment with the creation story as written in the Bible. It galls me to see these signs because the people putting them up are attempting to steal my faith and twist it into something it is not supposed to be, and THAT, I believe, is the ultimate in arrogance. It is highly likely that these "Christians" are the ones who willingly twist the words of the Bible, and cherry-pick only a few certain phrases out of a very large collection of books written over thousands of years to justify their bigotry and 'right to demonize' the gay sector of the populace, and I find it appalling. And what makes this even more appalling is that when you call them out for their bigotry and their distortion of scripture to justify their persecution of others-- specifically the gay and lesbian population-- you are 'infringing' on their 'religious freedom' and persecuting them.

As a Christian, I believe we are to worship God in spirit and in truth. And if we have a spiritual encounter with God, much like the one I described above, then we shall see the error of our ways, and not provoke a sector of the country by hurling accusations of 'sin' or 'disobedience' towards them, because as humans, we all have a propensity for failing to do the right thing and making blunders. As a person who has lived on the other side of the world, I have seen that people in all nations and all races mostly want the same thing-- and being on 'the other side of the fence' when it comes to my sexuality, I can unequivocally state that what I want is pretty much the same thing as any heterosexual male-- I want to be treated as an equal.  There is no way my marriage is about to destroy yours; yes, it may weaken your already weak attempt to redefine the word 'marriage' to suit your own petty agenda, but that's not my fault, nor my problem. I don't want anyone to think that my faith in God is less powerful than anyone else' because of my sexuality; my faith is strong, and being married to another Christian male is only going to help make our faith in God stronger. And yes, I want "Religious Freedom" too-- but not if it means I have to be a member of the Christian Taliban.  And to make sure you understand this, I will repeat it-- I am pro-life, because I know being 'pro-death' is NOT want you want. I suggest you take a better look at the words you fling around before your next protest.

Jason Collins and The Backlash Against Coming Out

So, Jason Collins, a center on the Washington Wizards NBA team, came out and said he is gay a few days ago. 

Already critics have jumped on the bandwagon-- Chris Broussard, an ESPN commentator, said that Jason was "walking in disobedience to God", even though Jason said he was raised in a Christian household and did not take the decision to come out lightly. 

Today, I read that a church in Wisconsin cancelled a speech by Leroy Butler, a former Green Bay Packers safety, because he sent Jason Collins a congratulatory tweet. 

Then, TMZ wants to jump in with an interview with his former fiance, who he 'dumped' back in 2009 before they hit the wedding altar, but she never knew why they broke up until last week, when he called her to tell her before he made his public announcement.

So the media are having a field day while tons of people are saying that it was wrong for Jason Collins to come out of the closet. 

And to that, I say this is precisely why it was good that Jason Collins came out of the closet right in front of the watchful eyes of millions of people.  

Until Jason Collins came out of the closet, very few of us knew of his sexuality. He was just another gay man living in the closet, hiding the fact that what we saw when we watched him play was not the REAL Jason Collins. 

Although I am not certain, Jason could have been 'on the down low', dating women and acting like his heterosexual teammates.  It is not uncommon for gay men to try dating women, just to try to fit in with the mainstream and  hide their true sexuality.  There is a lot of pressure, from both family and society in general, to do this: parents and grandparents often come across with expectations of children or grandchildren, as 'proof' that they 'raised their children right'; best friends want to know that those they grew up with are successful in their endeavors, because they can then claim their input contributed to said success of friends; teachers, preachers, community leaders all want to see their charges succeed for the same reason... 

But at what price?

At what price should a gay man or woman have to fit in with heterosexuals?  How can any heterosexual understand the level of pressure a gay man or woman feels to conform with expectations that he/she deny their basic, innermost feelings just to conform to expectations that will never be met?  At what price should a practicing Christian have to deny himself the right to love the person of their choice, just because misguided churchgoers say that their love is 'unnatural', or in 'disobedience', or 'a sin'? 

I loved my parents, but knowing that I, a gay man, will never be able to father a child-- something I have known since I was thirteen-- was a sad truth that I bore in secrecy for decades. Even when I came out to my mother, I was astounded to find out that she had harbored hopes that I may one day bring home some woman to introduce to her as my girlfriend-- after decades of never making such a move in the past, it shocked me to think that she was so far in denial. And after becoming a 'born again' Christian at the age of 38-- me, a gay man being accepted by God as I am -- I began seeking fellowship with other Christians like me and went to church in hopes of sharing the testimony that God DOES love gay people, only to be told repeatedly that "God would do a good work in me", which meant that I was wrong, that in the eyes of the parish, they expected God to convert me into something I was never meant to be-- i.e., heterosexual-- because, you know, gays fly in the the face of all that is good and Christian and holy, and they could not be a good Christian and accept as I am. 

So, I know what it is like for Jason Collins to have to brave the backlash from the audience, albeit the backlash he will face will be on a much grander scale. I know what it is like to face the fear of rejection, but to stand firm and state "I will not live a lie-- no more."  I know what it is like to feel the chains come off, to accept oneself, and stop trying to pretend to be someone you're not. And so I fully support Jason and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

The world may not be 'ready' to hear someone come out on prime time TV.  Tough!  Gay people are not going anywhere, no matter how many times a politician says gays should be rounded up into concentration camps, no matter how many times a church leader says the 'gay lifestyle' leads to eternal damnation, no matter how many friends or family members feel disappointed or confused, no matter how many times a person says "Ewww!" to two men kissing or holding hands in public. 

So, Jason and I are in the same boat.  And neither one of us, nor millions of other gay men and women like us, are about to change who we are just to meet the impossible expectations of the majority.  So, deal with it the best you can. But I'll tell you right now, treating me like the people above treated Jason Collins will not work at all.