love shows the way

Just so you know… If you happen to notice something weird going on with your body at say 11pm do not for the love of jeebus google your symptoms. Google will always tell you that you are dying and you will spend all your night tossing and turning thinking that you have some strange form of cancer.

Why would you do that to me Google? WHY!? Especially on a Monday.

Signed an extremely sleepy and grumpy, M

My good friend Nate who is gay posted an amazing status on facebook. I am still really angry and sad about what went down yesterday so I feel like his story (and many others need to be shared with the world).

Here’s his perspective:

It is frightening that the hatred and fear of gay people in North Carolina is so extensive that law makers and citizens and many Christian groups would throw a legislative grenade into the lives of its citizens, not even caring that other people besides gays and lesbians would be truly hurt by the shrapnel of this constitutional amendment.

As a gay person, I feel as though I have lost a place I once called my home, after the passing of Amendment One. I left NC to try to heal from the homophobia and self-hatred I had internalized at the hands of religious institutions and Christian counselors who told me that I was displeasing to God and emotionally damaged because I was attracted to the same-sex, and I spent years and years in Christian counseling in North Carolina and suffered terrible religious and emotional abuse because I wanted so much to be pleasing to God and to be accepted by the Christian community. By the time I decided to leave North Carolina, I couldn’t even bear to hear religious dogma and spent the next year, after leaving North Carolina, trying to wrestle through and vomit out the poison I had internalized— the self hatred, the feelings of worthlessness and self-disgust, and the thought that I was better off dead-I’m talking about suicide. All I wanted to know was that I wasn’t a disgusting freak of nature, or an evil creature, a mistake, or a stain on the human race. I wanted to know that I was loved and accepted and celebrated and cherished as I am and how I am. And I found that so many of my Christian brothers and sisters could give me sympathy and pity for my difficult situation of being gay and Christian, but only a handful could really truthfully tell me that they thought I was beautiful and wonderfully made as I am.

For me, in my time of uncertainty, the thing that filled me with the most hopelessness and despair was the fact that my friends could not hear the destructiveness of their religious affirmations, could not sense the bigotry within their religious doctrinal creeds and for me, the thing I felt most unforgivable was that, for years, I could not hear the self-hatred in my own words and affirmations regarding homosexuality because I thought that I had to renounce my sexuality, my sexual attractions for the sake of the Jesus’ kingdom, for the good of humanity, for my souls journey to heaven, to please my father in heaven, to live a good life, and for these goals I was willing to endure and make the most difficult of choices and suffer through the most humiliating of abuses. I was faithful to my God and my community but what was I fighting to preserve? What kind of faith could I hope to share with people if it involved such violence?

Religion, the pursuit of community, the desire to be loved and accepted by those around me, the desire to be like everyone else and my fear of being different, and my fear of death and hell and invoking the displeasure and punishment of God had numbed my heart and my mind to the atmosphere of bigotry and hatred that I had ingested and internalized. The canary in the coal mine of my religious pursuits had died, the oxygen was sucked dry, there was no longer air to breathe, and I was dying and had died in so many ways, and in my times of deepest struggle, I despaired to live in this world where cycles of oppression go on and on and where prejudice-somehow-always, always, always, throughout history, finds its most powerful ally in the hands of religious and, in the modern era, specifically “Christian” communities.

One of the biggest miracles of my life is that I, as a gay person, survived religious abuse and emotional pain I experienced though my dedication to and involvement in churches and organizations like Grace Community Church, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Daystar Christian Fellowship, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and even Spring Garden Community Church. Churches filled with so many wonderfully good and sincere people, people who i loved dearly and who loved me, but who were also blind to the bigotry and thus violence towards gay people enshrined in their doctrinal decrees and belief systems. I do not list the churches I have mentioned because I have a personal vendetta against anyone who attends these churches, I mention them because in my time in Greensboro, every church and organization that I mentioned at one time or another preached a sermon, invited a speaker, or several speakers or even sponsored a support group in which people “straight” and “gay” were taught that homosexuals were spiritually bankrupt, emotionally sick and psychologically distraught individuals. I know that these events happened because I was a participant in all of them as I searched for the cure to my own homosexuality and nodded in agreement with so much of the misinformation and fear that was expressed in those venues because it was in agreement with what I had been taught throughout my life.

I am sharing a part of my story because there will be a huge temptation to say that it was the Bible Thumping Fundamentalists and the outright religious bigots who got Amendment One passed. But it is my contention that the ground work for this type of legislation was found in the doctrinal creeds of mainstream Christianity and even those churches filled with good people who would consider themselves tolerant of gays while not accepting of their “lifestyle”.

I wish, as a gay man, to share some wisdom that I wish I had known years ago but that I have learned through lived experience:

1) You cannot believe that homosexuality is wrong without thinking that homosexual people are (in a very specific way) spiritually, psychologically, or emotionally disturbed.
2) You cannot believe that a homosexual person is (in a very specific way) spiritually, psychologically, or emotionally disturbed without developing a (a very specific) negative bias on some level that will leak out at some point, no matter how much you “welcome” or “tolerate” them with words or actions—the thought process is still there. It becomes a prejudice.
3) It is nearly impossible for a homosexual person to hear or read the message that they are (specifically) spiritually, psychologically, or emotionally disturbed without (over time) internalizing that they are a mistake, a wretched pervert, or a terrible force in the world, thus doing psychological damage. (I have seen this first hand, not only in my experience but in the experience of other gay people who have survived the world of Christian dogmatism).
4) In my experience, many people who are homosexual or same sex attracted in strict or even quasi strict religious communities are incredibly terrified of losing the communities and families they love because they will incur the persecution of their church communities. They might even be people you know.
5) Christians must recognize that bias against homosexuals is a part of our current society and thus will influence the ways in which they allow themselves to interpret “the word”.

Here is a basic example from the realm of our basic language:

1) If a person isn’t “straight” then they are _________. (fill in the blank)
Answer(s): gay, queer, lesbian, or the f-word (in private company)

2) The opposite of a “straight” line or path is a __________ line or path. (fill in the blank)
Answer(s): crooked

3) If I say a person is “crooked” that implies that they are of __________ character.
Answer(s): questionable, shady, suspicious, unsavory, deformed, demented

4) If I say a person is on the “straight and narrow” that implies that they are of __________ character.
Answer(s): unquestionably moral, pure, noble, upstanding

5) If a person isn’t “straight” then they are _________. (fill in the blank)

It is not enough to try to attack bias and bigotry in moments of national attention and when the fruits of prejudice are in full bloom. It will always and in every case most likely be much too late in those circumstances when fear has risen to that level, as was the case in North Carolina yesterday. If we wish to make change in North Carolina and everywhere, if we want to be a force of love, as Jesus was, then each of us must examine our own hearts and have conversations with others about whether or not we hear bias within us or between us, in what we say, in what we do, in how we react to gay people, to people of color, to women just to name a few historically persecuted groups. If you feel that homosexuality is a more destructive “lifestyle” than the heterosexual “lifestyle” when there is irrefutable scientific and sociological evidence that both homosexual people and heterosexual people make good parents and citizens in the world, then you might have a bias, a prejudice. If your church creed espouses these views, then your church might be part of the system of fear and hatred that helped give birth to NC Amendment One. Change and love start from within.

Seriously? How is it not Friday yet. I am ball of stress. Between unexpected expensive car repairs, my husband getting locked out of the house, my friend cancelling on our girls weekend last minute (for legit reasons, Im not upset at her), and me generally feeling crappy— I am about ready to scream.

I need to go for a run or have a drink. Maybe both.

Sigh….

End of pity party rant. Just needed my tumblr friends to hear me out. Maybe my day will get better?

-M

• The WTF podcast is getting me through this week at work. If you are not listening you should be. Very interesting and funny interviewes from Mark Maron.

• Certain coworkers are pissing me off today. Lets just say it’s the sort of day I wish I could drink at my desk a la “Mad Men”.

• Only a few more days until my weekend roadtrip with two of my besties for girl time and wine tasting in the Yadkin Valley. Cannot wait!

Thats all for now.

Xoxo

M