People should treat religion like sex--have it, enjoy it, even experiment with it, but do all that shit in private with consenting adults.
Last week I was walking across downtown to catch a bus when the fanatic spoutings of someone with hatred in their heart but trying to hide it under the guise of Christianity reached my ears.
"You will be forgiven for all!" the man shouts from the top of his bucket. "Adultery, pornography, beastiality, homosexuality..."
The last part gets me angry.
I wanted to spit as I walked past.
I wanted to tell him homosexuality is nothing that needs to be forgiven by God.
After all, didn't God create everything and everyone? By that logic, if there are people who find the same sex or opposite sex attractive or any variation in between, isn't that part of His plan?
I didn't, however. I knew where that conversation would go.
He would tell me that people aren't born the way they are, but that they CHOOSE to be homosexual or bisexual or feel that they're born in the wrong body.
Right--like anyone would seriously choose to be different from the "accepted norm", choose to be persecuted, humiliated, taunted, bullied, and terrorized for who they find attractive or how they dress or the fact that they are miserable because they have a different gender identity than the body they were born in.
Please don't take this the wrong way--I'm not saying there's anything wrong with choosing to be homosexual! I'm just against those people who feel it's a choice, something that can be changed, as if it's a disease and there is a cure. As if there's something wrong with it.
What can you do in the face of such blinding ignorance, such willful disregard for the very things they pretend to uphold?
I'm not against religion, per se. I think religion can do many great things for a lot of people...but there are two sides to that coin, and the other side is the exact opposite of kindness and charity towards others. That side is an ugly side, responsible for wars and death and hatred and persecution and the murder of innocents.
I am against doctrines that counsel that this life is nothing more than a place to prove ourselves for some everlasting glory afterwards.
We're here now, after all, and I think that this life should be as close to heaven as we can make it. Why spend our lives pining after something that is unknowable and can only be given to us once this life is over? We can only know for certain that we are alive, here today and now. Why squander this precious gift by thinking about what we'll get when it's over?
If we do that, then we blind ourselves to what's given to us right now.
And that's the crime that needs forgiveness, if you ask me.
4 comments:
Well said as usual. I take hope in the fact that my 71 year old Mother can overcome a lifetime of indoctrination about the evils of the 'fagalits' and the 'lazabeams'. Those hard core religious zealots and haters are the minority and we will marginalize them soon enough - or move them into the Thunderdome. Either way it'll be good entertainment.
If more people treated their minds like a parachute rather than a safe, like your momma, we'd all be better off (minds and parachutes work best when they're open).
I'll NEVER understand all the shit that is spewed in the name of god.
Blow me I say.
Even where I work, I hear daily how this or that guy is a 'good christian man.' Since when is being christian equal to being 'good'? Many heinous things have been done in the name of Christianity.
Oh dear. I better stop. I can feel a rant coming on.
Love your take on this. LOVE!
good post, I had a similar encounter with a religious nut...at work on a tram/bus. He started to shout out religious jargon and then proceeded to walk over to a couple and asked, "Did you hear what I just said."
I wanted to cuss this guy out and tell him to sit down and shut up.
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