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the last safe bigotry in america

I presume this to be a mystery, if not exactly a paradox, that God condemns homosexuality while, at the same time, creating homosexuals. To suggest someone can be born into an inescapable sin is to deny the power of the cross. To suggest that a person must war against their own nature and embrace shame and scorn just to make it into heaven and be embraced by a loving God is paralyzingly stupid. In that context, making criminals of homosexuals seems wrongheaded.

The U.S. Supreme Court today struck down a Texas sodomy law, in effect striking down all sodomy laws in the United States. By a ruling of 6-3, the court ruled that sodomy laws, "...wrongly deprive people of liberty." Justice Kennedy's majority opinion went on to say that sodomy laws, "...touch upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home."

The court case stemmed from an incident in Texas where a neighbor called police to report two men having sex. The police entered the premises and, discovering the men in the act, arrested them. Today's ruling reverses a 1986 Supreme Court opinion that stated there was no right to privacy for gay sex.

In a blistering minority opinion, Justice Scalia wrote, "The court has signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, and has taken sides in the culture war." Scalia predicted this ruling would mean, "...the end of all moral legislation."
Maybe he's right. and, maybe that's a good thing.

Earlier this year, The Colorado Springs City Council, now front-loaded with white conservatives, repealed a four month-old ordinance that extended health benefits to same sex partners of city employees. As the camera panned across the council members, many seemed bored and put-upon as testimony continued, pleading for the board to not repeal the ordinance. But repealing the ordinance was this new city council's first order of business. It came as no surprise and they made no secret of the fact that their very first order of business was going after this ordinance.

This is such a lovely town. But this little place in paradise, like many other little places in paradise, hides a terrible ugliness: a smug intolerance for anything and anyone who is not them. It's so very sad, this prejudice, this hatred and fear of things these people clearly do not understand. They couldn't even allow the gay community the dignity of being heard. Oh, they were afforded time to speak, but this council looked so very bored and so very put upon and summarily dismissed the health benefits, essentially on the basis of sexual orientation.

Now, in light of the Supremes ruling, that decision seems to have dubious legal foundation. But, worse than that, the lack of compassion, understanding and, geez, tolerance here is chilling. The problem, though, is liberals (I guess, like me) aren't really drawn to public office the way conservatives are. Probably the most basic difference between a conservative and a liberal is a conservative insists on telling you how to live, while a liberal defends your right to make your own choices.

While claiming to be God's right-hand man (and woman), most conservatives give God and religion a bad name by being inflexible, pushy, and demanding (the Big Hair and Republican suits don't help, either. I mean, I believe God is a now God. God is not out of touch. God knows what year it is, you can't fool Him by dressing like Darren from Bewitched).
The basic conservative template is Jesus chasing the moneychangers out of the temple. But that was the only recorded example of Jesus losing his temper, and it appears only in the Gospel of John (John 2:12-22), the least reliable of the Gospels. The conservative template is that of a mind-controlled, foolish drone. Someone living in the past (Rios and her Big Hair). These people who claim to love God are ultimately found to be rather fascist and rather racist. Their passion is for 1954, before all of the civil rights unpleasantness, when Ozzie and Harriet ruled the air waves, and where there were no homosexuals and where blacks and Mexicans were happy and content in their own neighborhoods and their own schools.

These are scary and dangerous people. Made all the more scary by the liberal left's willingness to accommodate them (it's the liberal way: we just kind of let things happen). While these mind-controlled feebs claim to speak for God, God, in fact, tends to speak for Himself. God, as I have come to believe in Him, allows us free choice. God does not force Himself or His holiness on us. So who are we to dictate terms to each other? In this context, it seems the hippie liberals are more consistent with Judeo-Christian scripture than the so-called "Christian" right.

Conservatives vote more than liberals because conservatives, lathered up in their righteousness, want laws to dictate social conduct, to tell you how to live. Conservatives make their voices heard and agendas known more than liberals. Liberals react. We arrive well after the barn is on fire. As lovely a place as this is, and surely there are few lovelier places in the world than rural Colorado, beneath the surface lurks a rural thinking, one driven more by fear than logic. A mid-1960's Leave It To Beaver mindset that endangers the most basic freedoms of Anyone Who Is Not Us.

The day of the Colorado Springs council decision, Sandy Rios, President of Concerned Women of America, in a defense of Senator Richard Santorum's remarks comparing homosexuality to bigamy, polygamy and incest, asked, in a voice so vividly fanatic it verged on camp, "Well, then, where do we draw the line abut consensual sex in the bedroom?!?"

"We"? Why are "we" in peoples' bedrooms in the first place? In this context, "Family Values" becomes a kind of code. Whose values? Whose family?

Of today's Supreme Court ruling, Rios, fuming under her 1973 Big Hair, called the decision, "...an act of judicial tyranny. It's why we're fighting so hard to get good justices in the Supreme Court." By good, I assume she means good for her.

Responding to the Santorum flack, a friend wrote in my weblog, "...Homosexual Rights activists campaigning for health benefits is objectively the same thing as Incestuous Rights activists campaigning for health benefits. " Incest (laws specifically intended to prohibit sexual conduct between an adult and a minor) is illegal. Homosexuality is a social issue, one non-gays struggle with as they go arrogantly about defining gay rights and dictating the civil liberties, rights and roles of gay people in this society. I see this as a civil rights issue. Lumping in a social cause like gay rights with clearly criminal and illegal behavior, like incest (and, by inference, pedophilia), is intrinsically sexist and hateful. Criminals are not extended the same level of civil rights. I mean, The Bank Robber Society of America campaigning for health benefits gets no sympathy from me.

In my Christian view, I serve a God who is more about love than vengeance or judgment. Too many people come forward in His name and behave in a manner inconsistent with the scriptural example (well, OK, the New Testament scripture, anyway) of the One they purport to represent. The Old Testament took place under the dispensation of The Law. We currently live under the dispensation of Grace. This does not entitle us to sin, nor should it encourage us to sin. But if God has extended grace to us, why on earth should we pass judgment on others?

God has given us free choice. Who are we to impose what we see as God's will on others when God Himself, who has all power in His hand, allows us our own flawed humanity? Whatever our individual interpretations of scripture and our various positions on these issues, the Colorado Springs City Council's general smugness (on camera, anyway) seemed inconsistent with Christian values. While their actions seemed clearly designed to appease the right wing, they seemingly acted on behalf of a God far too impotent to handle things Himself.

I presume this to be a mystery, if not exactly a paradox, that God condemns homosexuality while, at the same time, creating homosexuals. No rational vein of thought suggests homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, but, it is, rather, part of the human genetic makeup. Even the most dogmatic right-wing pulpit thumpers (and I've been known to thump a pulpit a time or two myself) no longer fully believe homosexuality is an environmental influence. In that context, making criminals of homosexuals seems wrongheaded. Before Christians can intelligently address the moral issues of human sexuality, we must first have a clear dialog and common frame of reference concerning the origins and authority of Mosaic Law, the accuracy and authority of the New Testament scriptures, and the thorny issue of understanding the difference between the Word of Paul and the Word of God.

In the New Testament in I Corinthians 6:9-11 it reads (NIV) "Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."

The Pauline Epistles are the benchmark for modern pastoral instruction. But it is important to understand the origins of those documents, the authority of those documents and the chain of custody of those documents. And, even taken wholly at face value, one must study Paul in the context of a (self-admittedly) deeply flawed individual with deep personal issues who was inspired by God to draft time and culture specific instruction to specific churches in specific areas who had specific problems that needed addressing. And, while Paul's instructions are indeed universal and of extreme value to us, we must embrace that teaching in the context in which it was given, or we run the risk of misinterpreting Paul's intent and failing to "rightly divide [interpret]" the scripture.

It is vital that anyone embracing the Christian faith understand the simplicity, complexity and responsibility of liberty in Christ, and the power of the simple verse wherein Paul encourages us to work out our own soul's salvation, in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Paul also asserts that, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness..." (2 Timothy 3:16).

But Paul was talking about the Torah, the Old Testament, not the New Testament. The New Testament did not exist when Paul was alive. Here Paul was not talking about his own letters, wherein he is frequently and desperately self-effacing. Which is not to deny the authority or power of the Pauline epistles but to put them into context.
I try not to judge people (well, maybe Donald Rumsfeld, but that's just for sport). I don't tell people how to live. I tell people how I live. The rest is your choice.

All of which is to say, I think we need to adjust our thinking to understand that morality is a common set of values agreed upon by the state or community. Morality and spirituality can be and often are mutually exclusive, much in the same way as a thing can be accurate without necessarily being true. I explored this idea in some depth in The Secret Garden:

This thinking involves an equating of theology with morality, which is entirely wrongheaded. Morality is dictated by the generally accepted tolerances of a given society at a given point in time and enforced by the state. Morality (the quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct) has no external or infallible truth to it. Theology (rational inquiry into religious questions), ideally, should be based on eternal truths, which have nothing to do with morality per se, other than that our adherence to these eternal truths forms opinions we express as guidelines governing our moral conduct. Theology and morality are hardly one and the same. A decent and moral idea, rule, or concept can still, in all its purity, transgress the holiness of a divine God. As such, our sense of morality is of not much use to God (Isa 64:6). Churches relying on their sensibilities of what is good, right, and moral (i.e. music styles, dancing, and, surely, masturbation) to dictate their interpretation of scripture is, in and of itself, faulty exegesis. The Church should not be in the business of dictating morality, but should be proclaiming truths both eternal and infallible. We, as individuals, having been presented with these truths, are a people at liberty to embrace or reject those truths, and our sense of morality is the expression of that decision.

None of which is to deny anyone's position on any issue of social conduct, but to encourage a rational debate, rather than the lobbing of rhetorical grenades over the fence line. The notion that homosexuals are, by definition, sinners, and so are not entitled to health care, is ludicrous. To brand them as deviant and put them all in The X-Men, is just stupid. To refer to them as "them" is wholly offensive.

To suggest someone can be born into an inescapable sin is to deny the power of the cross. To suggest that a person must war against their own nature or, I dunno, lock themselves in a closet, and embrace shame and scorn just to make it into heaven and be embraced by a loving God is paralyzingly stupid. But, this ideology fuels the thinking of most debate on these issues.

I think we could achieve a more honest and open dialog if we were all better informed (myself included). And if, at the end of the day, we as a so-called "Christian" society would have more trust in God and stop trying to do His job for Him.

Christopher J. Priest
June 26, 2002