MadPriest posted the whole of an editorial from the Los Angeles Times, written by Larry Kramer, gay activist and founder of ACT UP. The opinion piece is titled, Why Do Straights Hate Gays?
Gays are hated. Prove me wrong. Your top general just called us immoral. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is in charge of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian troops, some fighting for our country in Iraq. A right-wing political commentator, Ann Coulter, gets away with calling a straight presidential candidate a faggot. Even Garrison Keillor, of all people, is making really tacky jokes about gay parents in his column. This, I guess, does not qualify as hate except that it is so distasteful and dumb, often a first step on the way to hate. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions that Pace's bigotry raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.
....
Our feeble gay movement confines most of its demands to marriage. But political candidates are not talking about — and we are not demanding that they talk about — equality. My lover and I don't want to get married just yet, but we sure want to be equal.
You must know that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a federal act.
Larry Kramer is 72 years old, my age, and has been fighting the good fight for many years. I'm sure he gets tired. Progress is slow. But he still has fire in his belly. What gives gays and lesbians and FOGAL (friends of gays and lesbians) hope? I don't know, but I thought of this speech by Martin Luther King to the SCLC in Atlanta, August 16, 1967:
I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil-rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.
....
"Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
King's words still resonate for me. What about you?
UPDATE: These words of Larry Kramer cut deep:
Parts of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. are joining with the Nigerian archbishop, who believes gays should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever thought we'd have to worry about Episcopalians?
UPDATE II: The news from the Mind Of The House post above gives me hope for the Episcopal Church.
"Gays are hated. Prove me wrong. Your top general just called us immoral."
ReplyDeleteI suppose it is superfluous to suggest that thinking something immoral doesn't entail hating everyone who engages in it.
The counterexamples are too numerous to list. I would imagine that the general also considers adulterers and fornicators immoral. I wouldn't infer from that that he hates them, or that he is unfit to command them, even though they undoubtedly make up a larger percentage of the American fighting force that gays.
Or, to move a little closer in, if Jesus considered anything immoral, did he therefore hate those who engaged in it? I certainly don't think so.
What is in the crosshairs here doesn't seem to be the real haters (of course they are out there), but the notion of tolerance, the idea that one can disagree with something but live with it. To equate differing moral judgments with hatred is to cut the ground out from under any possible pluralistic society.
So, OK, Christians are hated. Prove me wrong. Christians are still killed for their faith in many parts of the world. But that doesn't mean that those who reject Christianity, who consider it ridiculous, or childish, or consider it positively harmful, all hate us.
I am sick of tired of being called immoral simply because I humbly love (and am faithful to) another woman.
ReplyDeleteSo, prove you don't hate us, rick.
Or is that too immoral for you?
IT
It seems to me that one of the necessary consequences of living in a free and pluralistic society is that we cannot expect or demand approval of everything we choose to do. However sick and tired you may be of others articulating the norms of traditional morality, that's part of the price of living under the first amendment.
ReplyDeleteBut can I "prove" I don't hate you? Of course not. Very little in this life is susceptible of proof. Christians are called to an ethic of universal love ("love" in the sense of "agapein," benevolence in imitation of divine love, as beautifully described in St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, not "love" in the sense of "have sex with"). Hatred, as the opposite of love, is obviously proscribed as sin. But given the Christian understanding of the ubiquity of sin, and of the fallenness of human nature, we can be ashamed, if not surprised, that disapproval too often devolves into dislike, contempt and finally hatred.
If I recall correctly from other posts you say you are an atheist. From your perspective, then, I understand that the category of sin has little meaning. But even among atheists there are disagreements about the morality of certain sexual relationships and acts, disagreements whose existence don't imply hatred.
Mimi I'm sure will recall the prayer of Charles Ryder in "Brideshead Revisited" at the deathbed of Lord Marchmain: "God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is any such thing as sin."
But even among atheists there are disagreements about the morality of certain sexual relationships and acts, disagreements whose existence don't imply hatred.
ReplyDeleteAh, Rick. You would have done better to leave out that condescending "even". I have known atheists whose moral standards were much higher and more admirable than many a believer.