PEOPLE WHO JUST DON'T GET IT!
Lets not lose sight of the fact that there exists a deep seated abhorrence of homosexuals in our society and in most religions, including Western and Eastern Christianity, Orthadox Judaism, Islam and others.
This has spilled over even to non-believers in our society. Civil Laws have been based on this abhorrence for years. For years!
The fact that I and other LGBT persons have to be vigilant in certain crowds and in certain parts of this country even today, attests to the degree to which we have been hated, despised and discounted and dismissed, not to mention done violence to.
Yes, all lives matter, but on Sunday, June 12 in Orlando, Florida, LGBT LIVES MATTERED as did LGBT dead and wounded.
STOP MINIMIZING THIS FACT.
Not everyone has had to live in a society where their love was called "the love that dare not speak its name", where men and women were arrested for "fraternizing" or dancing in pubs and bars, where people were fired from their jobs if they were discovered to be gay or lesbian, where LGBT partners were denied the right to visit a loved one in the hospital, where the likes of Matthew Shepherd was strung up on fence to die, where families could legally confiscate the estates of sons and daughters they once disowned and leave their dead child's partner penniless, where LGBT individuals could have their heads bashed in just for being seen leaving a gay bar, where 49 of us could be slaughtered in Orlando. I could go on...
What this tragedy is about is not guns or automatic weapons, though those issues have been rightly highlighted. It is about the deep-seated, visceral hatred of homosexuality and any other sexuality that is not hetero-normative.
No other minority is, by virtue of their existence, considered EVIL and sinful. LGBT's have been labeled evil, sinful, disgusting, and worse by religious leaders. We were called heretics and burned at the stake - the likely origin of the word "faggot" as in "throw another faggot (wood bundle) on the fire." THEY PICK AND CHOOSE WHICH BIBLE OR TORAH OR QURAN PASSAGES TO THROW AT US WHILE IGNORING "LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR" OR ADMONITIONS AGAINST WEALTH.
This is what gives bigots and sexually conflicted individuals PERMISSION to KILL.
Permission to kill those who threaten their strict, myopic, black-and-white world-view.
YES, PERMISSION TO KILL.
People who call themselves "pastors" or "preachers" and heads of religion-based organizations, many of them so-called-christians are, at this moment, calling for executing gays and lesbians. They are rampant on the internet. Nut-jobs? Maybe. But there are people who take them seriously.
And even the "nice" Catholics and Lutherans and Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, and AMEZionists, and Evangelicals, and Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons and Greek Orthodox so many other "nice" christian denominations that are not calling for outright execution have contributed to this culture of name-calling and judgement and moral condemnation.
This is the background in a nutshell of the world that has engendered and fostered and reveled in hatred and discrimination toward LGBT/sexual minorities.
Yes, people. You who cannot stand the fact that we are asserting our rights to live and to love and to exist in dignity along side everyone else. People WHO JUST DON'T GET IT!
2 comments:
"No other group has been deemed EVIL just for existing" (paraphrase - absolutely right, Frank. Ever since the Christians took over the Roman Empire in the 4th century, we have had NO right to exist, not until the last forty years or so - a moment in the long course of centuries. Because of course, the Bible (despite all its good parts) was written BY and FOR straight men. Who NEVER go ferreting out all the verses forbidding fornication and adultery, and beating one another over the head with them, do they?? Where are the preachers breathing fire and brimstone from the pulpit over what Johnny did with Sally last Friday night, huh? Oh but that's different, they say - really? Seriously? You lying shitbag hypocrites. (Pardon my francais.)
E-fucking-NOUGH! We are not the dirt beneath their feet, we are children of God too, whatever that means, and we are their equals. And we have a right to live and breathe freely and pursue happiness just like everyone else. Period.
Sorry for my outburst above. Preaching to the choir. Bad habit of mine.
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