The measure of a society is found in how they treat their
weakest and most helpless citizens.
~Jimmy Carter
I have debated whether or not to touch on this subject,
whether I should keep my opinions to myself, or whether I should write them
down. While trying to convince my child
to go to sleep this evening, I realized, this is mine, my little corner of the
internet, and I can write about politics, gay-right, chicken, or anything else,
if I want to.
If you were to skim over the personal history page of my
facebook, you would see that I grew up in North Central Texas. And if you have ever heard me talk, you know
that I am the daughter of a devout (I cannot stress that enough) Southern
Baptist father. And you might rightly
make the assumption that I am a conservative, that I am a devout Baptist that I
believe the tenements the church I grew up in espouses. You would be wrong.
At some point in my own wandering path through life, I took
a sharp left turn away from the teachings I grew up with, both cultural (white
Southern) and Biblical. I ended up a
left-leaning liberal, with just enough edge to make me a hawk. Officially, I am pro-choice, pro-gun control,
anti-death penalty, pro-Wall Street regulation, pro-gay rights, pro-nationalized
health care, and yes, I voted for Obama.
I will again in a few months. I’m
also Catholic.
But I didn’t really start out to write about that. I really wanted to write about this whole
Chick Fil A nonsense.
Yes, the Bible says that marriage is between a man and
woman. It also littered with the
examples of marriages that aren’t that, multiple wives, concubines, women
forced to marry a conqueror, the list goes on and on. And many will say that homosexuality is
gay. For the record, I don’t, and this
blog post by the wonderful Reverend Sandlin says it better than I do as to why
I don’t. Clobbering Biblical Gay Bashing
And yes, Dan Cathy, president of Chik Fil A, was within his
rights when he was interviewed by a Christian magazine, as saying he believes
marriage is between a man and a woman, and he does not support gay
marriage. He gets the right to say that. Everyone gets the right to believe however
they so chose to believe, and talk about those beliefs.
However, we do NOT get to force our beliefs on our
neighbors.
Your right to believe as you see fit comes to end where my
right to live as I see fit starts.
The Bible mentions homosexuality, by my count, 6 times. It mentions the poor and vulnerable at least
150 times. I gave up counting at 164 to
be exact. So we, as a country, are
obsessing about a group of people who just want to have what we have, marriage,
the ring, the white picket fence, over 6 verses. And we seem to be ignoring the other
verses. The little verses about caring
for the poor, the sick, loving your neighbor, not judging your neighbor.
So for everyone who says that Dan Cathy was right, that he
is a good, moral man, that he should be supported… did you donate to charity
recently? Have you taken clothes to
Goodwill, given a panhandler money (even better, brought him some food??), have
you taken blankets to a homeless shelter, have you given blood, bought
groceries for your neighbor? Are you living as you should, as the Bible says, while at the same point in time you're pointing a judging finger at someone else for doing things differently?
And there is another point here that hits very close to home
for me.
60 years ago, it was illegal for me and my husband to be
married in the South. The miscegenation
laws that were written to keep black and white from intermarrying would also
have been in effect against Carl and I.
These racially motivated heinous laws were backed up by many people, by Biblical
proof, verses in the same Bible I read today. Thanks to the
brave efforts of men and women I will never meet, those beliefs were banished
to the dark closet of human history.
Once upon a time, the Bible was used as a belief why I, a
woman, should not be able to vote. I’ve
had the verses about a good wife, who submits to her husband in all things,
drilled into my brain. And thanks to
scores of women, who marched and yelled and argued, and who wanted their voices
heard, I get to vote.
The road to Westboro Baptist Church, their hated protests,
their vile attitudes, their intolerance, for all of us, starts with denying
rights to another human being, over our beliefs. It is a slippery slope, one where what we
belief factors in to how someone else lives their life, and at the bottom, are
the Phelps, and behind them, Hitler and his concentration camps, Stalin and his
graves, Pol Pot and his skulls. All the
dictators, tyrants, all the monsters of human history, started by enforcing
their beliefs on everyone else, forcing human beings, who have every right to
believe and feel and think and love as they so choose, to live as they
wanted.
~Jennifer
No comments:
Post a Comment