Bully As Victim Won’t Play Well
Following the extensive backlash after Proposition 8 in California, the LDS Church, through its Apostle Dallin Oaks, has gone to its roots to gain public support—victimization. It won’t work.
It’s pretty obvious that violence, including vandalism, is not condoned by either side of the gay rights issue, and it is appropriate to single out any such instances and seek appropriate prosecution of violations.
That said, the whining of the LDS Church and its attempt to turn itself into a victim because of some scattered and isolated vandalisms is a rather pathetic scene. It’s like the bully on the block running for cover when some of his victims surprise him by getting up from their beating and fight back.
Our landscape is strewn with the broken lives of thousands of gays humiliated at the hands of the pulpit and its repulsive message that has condoned the real vandalism of homophobia, including Matthew Shephard, Harvey Milk, and our suffering gay children who are bullied and abused physically, mentally, and spiritually in our public schools, who are homeless because of rejection, many of whom are driven to suicides, and some of them occurring on the chapel doorsteps; and still the false prophets disavow their carnage.
The vandalism of homophobia doesn’t scar buildings, it scars souls, of both the giver and the receiver.
Let’s not let the churches change the fundamental nature of this problem. Gays are the victims and churches and their old-age dogmas born in mythology are the perpetrators. Without the all knowing, cocksure self-righteousness of religious people who insist on condemning, berating, marginalizing, ostracizing, and discriminating against gays there would be no problem. Most of the rest of the world has adopted a ‘live and let live’ attitude. Let’s not let a few scattered, isolated instances of resistance create a new victim.
Oppressors should expect resistance and the oppressed should resist. The resistance against all churches and their members who diminish the rights of gays should increase not decrease.
The resistance should have the goal of stripping the churches of their deceitful message and its illusions of righteousness. Their message is not the Golden Rule, but its antithesis. It is not a message of Love Thy Neighbor, but the opposite. It is not pro-family, but virulently anti-family. Focusing on that simple truth is the greatest strength of the gay movement. The gay movement is teaching the world true religion.
Let’s remember that it is not just Mormons, but Catholics, Muslims, some Baptists, and many other religions who have wielded the sword of oppression against gays. In Utah gay rights activists are targeting the Mormons because they are their closest, most visible, and most active foe and gay rights advocates have a responsibility to fairness and justice to respond vigorously and appropriately.
We should push forward fervently, while proceeding with malice toward none, remembering that our oppressors are our own friends, our own brothers and sisters, and our own moms and dads. It is a new untraveled road for them. Let us understand where they are coming from, where they have been, and give them a chance to arrive. That day is coming. We are near. More and more newly discovered parents of gays, when faced with the difficult choice, are rejecting their church rather than their children. Every gay is part of a family, and an extended family, and those tentacles reach into every home in the world. It’s an Oxymormon for a church to think it can be pro-family and anti-gay at the same time. Anti-gay churches cannot survive this tsunami of understanding that is sweeping the earth.
