It has been another one of those days in UK news. The Church of England hates LGBT people. The Pope hates LGBT people (with a “missionary zeal”, no less). Everywhere you look, whether it is here, or in the US, or elsewhere around the world, the thing that defines Christianity is a burning hatred of homosexuals and trans people. What is more, Christians militantly demand the freedom to practice that hatred. (And, to be fair, some other religions seem to be as bad.)
Can you imagine what people would people would say if the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury demanded the right to be allowed to hate people because they were disabled, or because they had red hair? Yet somehow the right to hate LGBT people is a part of “natural law”.
Whatever happened to the Gospel of Love?
Oddly enough, it is still out there. There are plenty of Christian groups who are fully supportive of LGBT people. I wrote about one such group a while back. Also I have many friends who are Christians, even some who are members of the clergy. What concerned me (and I very nearly wrote an angry post about this over the weekend) was that those people didn’t seem to speak out. They were happy to sit back and let the bigots and rabble-rousing politicians in their community set the agenda.
If you poke people often enough, however, they will fight back. This morning’s news stories have prompted Paul Cornell (whose wife, let’s not forget, is training to be a vicar) to speak out. You can read his post here.
I’m delighted that Paul has chosen to speak out, but he can’t do this alone. If you are a religious person (of any faith), and you agree with what he says, please support him, either with a comment or by tweeting using the #godlyforequality tag. Pope Ratty is probably beyond hope, but if enough of you speak up then the bishops and cardinals and other religious leaders around the world will have to take notice of you.
“Pope Ratty” is good– here in Brazil some of us use to call him “Frau Ratzinger”. You know, just to épater les bourgeois- or les bigots, should we say?
We should all be standing up for the rights of the individual.
If its O.K for churches to discriminate this way, we should let other groups discriminate as well if its against their beliefs. Be that a wish to discriminate against Jews, blacks or any other minority. Churches have no special rights.
To let any organization get away with any form of discrimination is to start taking down the planks of anti-discriminatory legislation. You cannot allow discrimination against one group of individuals and not start accepting it against others.
This is not being anti-Christian, because the same should apply to Christians as individuals and the recent case of the women who was stopped from wearing her cross in public is an example of where she should be supported for the same reasons.
I’m with you on the wearing of religious symbols, but the reason people get upset about it is what it means to them. For far too many LGBT people someone wearing a cross is saying to them, “I hate you”. If more Christians were like Paul, there would not be the same fear.