As someone who has supported gay rights going back to the 1980s, back when there was some real social scorn associated with having gay friends, I have noticed in recent years that a lot of gays and other "gay rights" activists have become terrific bullies of religious people. They particularly like to scapegoat Christians, and portray the Gay Rights Struggle as a long struggle against repressive religious forces. A particular focus of their ire is often Catholics, followed closely by organized, mainline Protestantism (Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, etc.).
This is ironic considering what you see when you look at the attitudes of religious Americans:
Mainstream Christians in overwhelming numbers always supported treating gays as deserving of respect and compassion for their dignity as human beings, which has only grown with time. Were they wrong?
You can view the full survey at the Pew Research Group. Yes, anti-gay attitudes existed in these religious groups in greater numbers before, and anti-gay sentiment still exists. However, Catholics and Mainline Protestants are only slightly distinguishable from the nonreligious, and Catholics and Mainline Protestants are still, overwhelmingly, a group few politicians can ignore. By comparison, self-righteous secular atheists look miniscule and ridiculous in the general voting populace.
This is mathematically inescapable: No support for gay rights among Christians=no gay rights. It wouldn't have happened because it couldn't have. Even the US Supreme Court, which has delivered many pro-Gay decisions, is overwhelmingly made up of religious people--even while certain secularist bigots complain that there are too many Jews and Catholics on the Supreme Court. ("Progressives" used to recognize religious bigotry. Apparently not so much for modern "secularist" atheists huh?)
Here's another problem for the anti-Christians who portray the gay rights struggle as being purely about poor oppressed gays having to overcome Christian bigotry: first off, it turns out that "homophobia" is genetic and universal regardless of religion. And furthermore, countless atheist regimes have imprisoned, tortured, mutilated, and murdered gays--generally in ways far more extreme than you find in most of Christian history I might add.
Christians, as it happens. have a set of values you can usually hold them to. While Biblical "evangelicals" and "fundamentalists" generally can come to any conclusion they want to by Prooftexting, the teachings of most mainline, organized Christian denominations has always been the same: These people are human, they deserve dignity and respect as human beings, and they shouldn't be denied their rights or treated like animals.
Indeed, given the full context of the Bible, even sections that seem to condemn gays as evil must be read in light of Romans 2, which makes it clear Christians would be utter hypocrites to want to stone or otherwise harm people for sexual sins. Paul was living in a time when most people, not just most Christians, found homosexuality deeply disturbing; Pagan Romans were no different in this regard. It turns out that from Roman times until now, many Pagans have been anti-gay.
Also, atheistic libertarians have nothing to brag about, given how many libertarians like Ayn Rand were and are anti-gay.
Oh, Hindus and Buddhists? No outright condemnation of homosexuality, just general distaste and negative cultural attitudes.
In the meantime, thoughtful Christians have long noted that hating gays just isn't Christian.
Yes, there are even some liberal Christians who go too far, suggesting we have to just accept gay marriage as being exactly the same. Most Christians probably will never fully accept such an unorthodox view of marriage as spiritually sound of course, but there is a growing consensus that the State can issue whatever marriage licenses it wants. Christians and other religions can have their own rules and ignore the state license completely for spiritual matters, viewing the marriage license as to be avoided or just used for legal purposes only. Which means that gays can have the legal protections without the rest of us having to worry about it.
This "live and let live" attitude is the default attitude of almost all Christians I know, including those who were on the "anti" side of the gay marriage debate. But for some reason, it doesn't seem good enough for some secular activists, who demand 100% agreement and 0% reservation on LGBTQ+ issues--which is where we get abusive secularist atheists ramming their morals down other people's throats, such as in the "Bake the Cake" incident, where a small store run by Evangelical Christians was brutally told they had to bake a gay wedding cake whether they wanted to or not.
What “Gay Rights” increasingly looks like to millions. Are you good with that, Christian-haters, or will you double-down on the anti-Christian bullying?
The fact is that the gay rights movement is increasingly seen as a pack of moralizing, preaching, judgmental, controlling, demanding, and even potentially violent jerks who will smash anyone who expresses any reservation about things like gay marriage or massive gay pride parades.
Which is not a situation I created, it's merely a situation I observe as reality.
We were told all gays wanted was to be treated as humans no worse than we are, deserving of all the rights we have. Now we're increasingly told Christians are sub-human primitives if we have any reservations, at all, about anything LGBTQ+.
So I will say this again: without Christian support, there would be no gay rights in America. And if you look across the world, in regimes run by other religions, or specifically atheist regimes? You see a far worse record of mistreatment of gays than you do in most historically Christian nations. Yet Christians often wind up being the most hated instead, for civil disobedience or any other balking.
Did Christians make a mistake to back gay rights? When Christians are abused by atheist secularists and self-righteous LGBTQ+ activists, we have reason to wonder. How far does the bullying of dissenting Christians go, for sometimes saying "hmm we're not sure?" or even "that's gross?" Should we more tolerant Christians change our minds and decide we were betrayed, and that the most conservative among us were right to scorn us for being tolerant?
These are real questions, not rhetorical. If Christians are going to be scapegoated and spat upon for being Insufficiently Gay Friendly, fast enough, why shouldn't Christians re-evaluate the relationship? If you hate us, you "enlightened pro-gay antireligious secularist progressives," how enlightened and tolerant are you really?
Indeed, might not the constant Christian-bashing on gay issues not now be seen as blatant proof that our "homophobic" minority was right along and we were stupid not to listen to them?
PS: On behalf of Catholics everywhere, you're welcome for the free AIDS hospices that we've been running since the 1980s.
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References:
https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/ByIssue/Article/TabId/735/ArtMID/13636/ArticleID/10059/US-Catholics-on-ground-level-of-HIVAIDS-battle.aspx
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/06/punching-down
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/02/jesus-might-bake-the-cake-but-would-he-perform-the-nuptials
http://www.mercyseat.net/marriagelicense.html
https://www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/tenbibilicalthemes/
http://www.theopedia.com/proof-texting
http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_the_persecution_of_homosexuals
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/natural-homophobes-evolutionary-psychology-and-antigay-attitudes/
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/sotomayor-too-many-catholics-jews-on-the-high-court/2016/04/09/
http://www.queerty.com/six-reasons-why-todays-libertarian-movement-is-not-at-all-pro-gay-20140825
http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/contemporaryissues/a/Gay_Pagans.htm
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/12/18/most-u-s-christian-groups-grow-more-accepting-of-homosexuality/
http://www.religionfacts.com/homosexuality
5 comments:
Dean, it's not about gay rights, it's about hating Christians. In that, this has been a very, very successful campaign. Christian opposition to gay marriage is rooted in biology, built from the first principle that human lives are unique in the eyes of God. Since every human life comes from sexual relations between one man and one woman, that relationship must be set above all others. There's no hate or phobia in any of this and there never was.
The LGBT movement isn't about rights for gays or converting people to acceptance. It's part of a broader cultural war against objective morality. Christianity must be neutralized in order for them to win that war.
So good luck trying to wave the white flag of acceptance. That's not going to work for long. That's why the latest "civil rights" movement is to let 6' 300# men into small, windowless, nearly soundproof rooms with our 12-year-old daughters. Once we accept that, they'll come after us in a new way.
Oh, look! It's SB 1146!
Did Christians make a mistake to back gay rights?
Well-meaning Christians got caught up in the prevailing ethos, that of "radical individualism." The primary concern is not what is best for the individual, but what is best for our society, and for our children.
Creditable sentiment for the humane treatment of same-sex attracted persons [attracted through no fault of their own] forgot to look at the slippery slope, where "equality" would end up demanding the fiction that Heather can be raised just as well by two mommies than by a mother and father.
If there's no such thing as children, there's no reason to care about social mores much--Don't murder or steal or park in front of a fire hydrant about covers it. But the human equation is a lot more complicated than that. Unfortunately, Christians replaced the wisdom of the ages [including the Bible] with a simple-minded Barneyism that includes buying the false promises of liberinistic libertarianism and the "dictatorship of relativism."
The sexual revolutionaries framed their war as an extension of racial segregation, and so naturally they see their enemies as the same sort of racists responsible for Jim Crow. They will see that Christians are not their enemies when the identity-politics activists see that whites are not the enemies of blacks -- i.e., never. Not just because they are reactionary and adversarial by nature, but because the rift between the races never fully healed. ("Healed" is a poor word, because it suggests a return to some natural condition, which never existed.)
There is a certain political advantage where the ground is always shifting, where there is always some great original sin to be routed, in that it permanently thwarts a conservative argument: there is no principle that can be asserted free from accusations that it is steeped in bigotry and hypocrisy. And so even if the answer is somewhere up in the clouds, it is better than the muck and mire which is all that is allowed into the Historical record; and even if we can't reach the clouds without stepping on some necks, it is permitted -- righteous even -- because they are only the necks of the privileged.
Exc. There are no goods, only make-goods. It is impossible to ever start at the beginning.
The worst era to live in is when the repression stops. The formerly repressed will be out for revenge.
Repression of drug users in America is declining (a good thing). Watch out.
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