(no subject)
written by the lj user sxesara523
Faggot. Queer. Homo. Flamer. Dyke. That’s so gay. These words don’t exactly give off a warm fuzzy feeling when you hear them. Many people, whether being brought up with hatred, or in extremely religious families, have something in common. Homophobia. And a good percent of these people claim that their religion is the thing that compels them to hatred. Despite the teachings of their most sacred and holy scriptures, most of these people unfortunately interpret them to say: HATE!
The most recent place that I have heard such bigotry is in the news. Priests and pro-Christian activists all claim that God hates homosexuals. There have been protests against the legalization of gay marriages, as well as threats of erecting a statue in honor of Mathew Shepherd. He was a young man, who also happened to be gay, that was beaten and eventually died because of who he was. Rather than honoring his memory, it is a statue that is threatening. It is to "teach everyone that what he stood for was wrong and that his death was deserved." Things like this have to stop. One would think that after the civil rights movement, equal rights would be coming around. Unfortunately, there is still racism, and more predominantly and less closeted, with no pun intended, homophobia.
Our own president is even perpetuating the abhorrence towards homosexuals. Recently, he officiated the week as "Marriage-Protection" Week, where the celebration of heterosexual marriages being holy and right took place. Ironically, but not surprisingly, it is also National Coming-Out Week, as well as Diversity Awareness Week. This country was born upon the idea of church and government being separate. Regrettably, this is becoming further from the truth. Using The Bible as a soap box, people practicing hatred and homophobia are increasing and taking more of a stand. Shortly after the death of Mathew Shepherd, members of a theatre group created The Laramie Project, which turned into a critically acclaimed movie and play, illustrating Shepherd’s terrible death and exploring the hatred and lack of tolerance towards homosexuals in America. In our very own Central Florida Future, an article showing the great intolerance that the Christian community has, quoted Shirley Phelps-Roper, the attorney for the Westboro Baptist Church saying, "The Laramie Project is homosexual propaganda made by fags for fags to promote the filthy lifestyle." Unless the creators of the play instigated and hurt this woman somehow, I see no reason for her to be so blatantly hateful.
These people representing churches should take a step back and realize that The Bible contains only six admonishments toward homosexuals and three-hundred and sixty-two admonishments toward heterosexuals. That is a fact. There is no possible way that any self-respecting Christian or other religious affiliate could say that God preaches hate. Otherwise, in accordance with what The Bible says, they would have to hate everyone, including themselves. So why this (not so) sudden outburst of bible-hugging homophobia rearing and ready to attack anyone that might practice an alternate lifestyle?
Only one phrase comes to mind in this case. "Ignorance is bliss." These people have been taught only one way of thinking and are not open or accepting to any other way. But I am almost positive that if there weren’t so many pro-Christian activists and priests shouting "homosexuality is wrong" and showing certain passages in The Bible that could be interpreted as such, then homophobia wouldn’t be such a problem. Interpretation, in fact, is the problem. Throughout most of my life, I attended a parochial school, and included in its curriculum, was a required religion class. I thought that since I went to a predominantly Christian school, (it was in fact an Episcopalian one), that the religion classes would be completely biased. I found, however, that was not the case. We learned about every religion, and our teacher even taught us that there were three ways of interpreting The Bible. One way was the direct approach; taking everything word for word as true. Most of the homophobic priests and activists follow that way. The other way was just taking it as myth, and a "nice story" to help people live and teach morals. And the third way was a mix between the previous two. If all of these people would learn to take things with a grain of salt, and maybe listen to the other half of The Bible that preaches love, then we wouldn’t have such problems.
It seems nowadays that our country has been founded upon hatred, bigotry, and closed-mindedness rather than freedom, love, and peace, which was its original intention. Only two things will be able to stop it. A gradual death of the generations that were taught hatred (including the President (PLEASE?!), or a new way of teaching people to start accepting everyone. Unfortunately, it is a lose-lose situation. This all started when the settlers kicked out the Native Americans. Americans, by default, hate anyone that is different. I say we off them anyway.
Its all enough to make me SCARED to be who I am.
I almost wanna hide it. v_v;