A friend told me this weekend that societal issues cannot be fully understood on a macro level…that in order to get to the crux of an issue that affects everyone, you gotta look at the individual stories of the someones. Well, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen the tragic end of the stories of five someones, gay teenagers, who felt that suicide was the only way out and to that I say, “ENOUGH!!!”
It’s time to talk this thing out before one more precious, viable, lovable life is destroyed.
What’s the real issue here anyway? I get that we as Christians believe that homosexuality is wrong but how does preventing someone from getting married dissuade them from being gay? If they’re born gay, ain’t they still gonna be gay, married or not? Maybe even gayer. Y’all know how folks get when you tell ‘em they can’t do something. Jokes aside, it seems to me that being gay and being married are two unrelated things. Plus it’s about equality — why shouldn’t gay people suffer right alongside the rest of us??
Christians, if we believe that homosexuality is a sin then certainly we believe that lying is also a sin because it’s written in the same source. However, there are a whole group of liars getting married every day…they’re called MEN!! But I don’t see your ass writing up no propositions to keep their lyin’ asses out the sacred institution. The reality is there are many sins — that’s why there are so few real Christians. So why, then, are we honing in on homosexuality as the worst sin? I smell hypocrisy (I know it sounds mean, but I did sing it in a really high voice to soften the blow) And LBGTQ’s – before you get your panties (OK, so some of you wear boxers – but c’mon bois, I’m just sayin’ it for effect) all in a knot about how God made you that way so it can’t be a sin – STOP. You can’t change thousands of years of a belief system just because you say so. Folks are not going to accept readily what they don’t understand. Period. And not even Your Royal Gayness is going to be able to change that just because you’re quick-witted and sassy. It’s only natural for folks to want to understand how this will impact the institution as we know it. I, for one, have asked quite a few LBGTQ’s about how these marriages would fit into the church and the Christian belief system as we know it and I’ve yet to get a straight answer. I think most of us are tired of the bashing and would jump at the chance to talk and understand one another. But instead we all just seem to be condemnin’ and confusin’. It gets us nowhere and it ain’t gonna work. And that’s straight talk.
Gay folk are not just gonna give up the ghost and go ‘way. I have to agree with them – they’re queer, they’re here and we’d better get used to it. Just like America did with black folk, it’s time for America to accept gay folk…in that long-handled spoon, love ya from a distance but don’t move into my neighborhood kinda way. Well, that’s not true…everyone wants gays to move into their neighborhood. Damn, black folk, we’re about slip one more rung on the social ladder.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that beliefs can’t be forced on anyone. But tolerance must. We’ve all got to have a zero tolerance policy for physical and verbal violence and bullying against the LGBTQ community. Not just because it’s wrong but also because you’re likely to get hurt. All the gay people I know are scrappy as hell!! They’ve been fighting bullies all their lives. Pick on ‘em if you want…but you like to had got dealt with. Just cuz he like pink don’t make him a punk! (Note: Got a few questions about the phrase “like to had got dealt with” from some folk not well versed in the vernacular. ”Like to had got dealt” is a colorful, idiomatic expression that indicates the receiving party would have his ass handed to him presumably after an ass whoopin’ the likes of which he has never experienced before. My people are wonderfully gifted and creative craftsmen of language.)
A little human compassion goes a long way. Despite what the church says, I’m not ready to de-humanize the LBGTQ community and force fit them into a monolithic box of lumberjack dykes and effeminate, squishy-bottomed boys on their way to Sodom and Gomorrah…or West Hollywood, as we know it today. There are stories and people and families and really, really fabulous fashion sense involved here. Can you imagine a couple being together for fifty years and then one of them gets sick? Can you imagine the other one not being able to make decisions about the partner that he or she spent their entire life with just because they’re the same gender?
The truth is that I don’t know how I feel about the issue of gay marriage, perhaps because I’m more concerned about the marriage part than the gay part of that phrase. But I do know that I need to be educated quickly before, left to my own ign’ant ass, outspoken devices, I try to make a decision on my own. Have we learned nothing from the Tea Party Movement? Right, wrong or indifferent, human compassion tells me that love is love and that two people who decide to spend this life together should be able to do so and be recognized to the very, very end. Or at least until Jeff Fisher comes in and splits the assets equitably cuz one spouse found out the other one had a secret hetero relationship on the…uh, uh, up high? Equal rights, y’all, equal rights.
