Stranger in a Strange Land

Below is a portion of an on-going conversation between myself and someone else being held via facebook.

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The homosexual issue is one that conservative, evangelical Christianity has landed on as being of particular importance and I’m not sure why. God does not rank sin. *If* homosexuality is in fact a sin, it isn’t any worse than gossip, lying, swearing, pornography or any other of dozens of sins practiced without notice in American Churches. If I say to you “You are a gossip and that is how I am going to define you and you will never be anything more to me than that and because of it, you may not come to my church and you cannot receive the love of Jesus,” that will be hurtful to you and you will begin to doubt how someone who claims to know Jesus could treat someone that way. If you get that same speech from 10 pastors or 50 or 100, you will begin to believe that God can’t love you and that you are a fundamentally flawed individual. That is what Evangelical Christianity has done to the gay community. It has failed them. We say “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” but that’s bullshit. God the Father never said that. Jesus never said that. God said, “I love you.” He put no conditions on it. If a gay person has accepted Jesus Christ as savior, God doesn’t see that person any differently than he sees me. If we are saved, by Grace, not of ourselves; then when the Father looks at us, He sees Jesus. That is the beauty of our relationship with God. You say “You’re talking about being loving like Christ…why not love what is Righteous and Holy?”. I say, Jesus loved you and me *before* we were Righteous and Holy.

Now, separating the religious from the political, there is no rational, political or societal argument for denying consenting, non-related adults from marrying. Every argument comes back to religion and we cannot use religion as a basis for our government. We are not a theocracy.

I am passionate about this issue because I believe it is a fundamental issue of Human/Civil rights and if I can be half as passionate about this civil rights movement as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was about his, then I will be satisfied.