Enough Already!

• There comes a point where any sensible human being needs to take a stand and shout from the highest building “Enough Already!”

What am I talking about? Allow me to elaborate.

Last month, Bryan Fischer, James Dobson, and a few other” leaders” of the fundamentalist, far right once again blamed the LGBT community and it’s nefarious  plans to gain equal rights and marriage equality for the deaths in Newtown, Conn. This is nothing new since this community has been blamed for a variety of horrors in America over the last few decades. Included in this list, but not limited to, were the  pronouncements of  the late Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson in casting the blame for AIDS and the destruction of the World Trade Center on “the gays”.  And of course we have the Westboro Baptist “church” blaming the “sodomites” for everything evil that happens in the world. Multitudes of fundamentalist/evangelical pastors have and do stand in their pulpits every week and hurl mocking, angry and hate filled words toward the gay community, teaching their people to loathe and fear the “homosexual”. And their congregants run with it as if it were Gospel truth.

This past Monday, a not so new twist was introduced again on the Rush Limbaugh show,  there he equated the normalization of same gender marriage as proof that the acceptance and normalizing of pedophilia was right around the corner. he somehow believes that marriage equality will lead to forty-four year old uncle Billy showing up at your door with his five-year old girlfriend. And that itr will be acceptable because there is a legally married gay couple living in the same neighborhood. Could there ever be a more insane comparison, but then again, look who said it.

Would someone please tell me why fear-mongering by meglomanic with a radio show is ok when it comes to attacking a minority group? And why is teaching people to hate others from a church pulpit or from Christian radio and television acceptable behavior? Why is it ok to continually demonize a group of people who want nothing more than to be treated as equals in America and around the world? While I will never expect the political/social far right, having opposed the rights of  large swaths of minority populations in America, to change their ways in accepting people as people, I still hold out a sliver of hope that perhaps the church will. After all, the church, the visible Body of Jesus on earth is supposed to be a vessel of grace and mercy, unconditional love and forgiveness. Right?

And the LGBT community should not be a punching bag and scapegoat for what is wrong with America. There is no difference between an individual in the straight community, and an individual in the gay community. Each live their lives with the same expectations for themselves and their families. Let me state this again THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. The same fears, joys, problems are similar.

It really is past time for those who say that they love Jesus to stand up and tell the bigots, racists, homophobics  and misogynists in our congregations and denominations  to stop misrepresenting the God of the universe with their narrow-minded unchristian views, or they need to leave.

We, as believers have a responsibility to the world to love, with a love that will draw people to the God who is love. Our record over the last few decades has been very poor. 

But we still can change.