"My gold leaf mascara/ washes away/ in a deep dark river/ of my first world misery
We have a real problem in the United States. People picking on other people, calling them names, blowing up their Timelines with hatey memes. It has to stop, before someone has a First World breakdown and has to have a second Frappucino today to make the world seem right again.
I am speaking, of course, about Christian on Christian bullying. Turns out, a growing number of faithful churchgoers are allowing Lucifer hisself to take them by the hand and lead them down the path of not voting for bills like California’s Prop8 (wiki bitches). The fact that they have gone against Jesus and supported the lesser primates who engage in same-sex relations is bad enough. Frankly, they are lucky to be surrounded by such good Christians that even let them go to their church after that. But these spiritual traitors couldn’t be satisfied with mere grudging tolerance. Nay!
Consider the story of Halee Gray Scott, who has chronicled her tale of bullying woe here. In her harrowing account, she tells how she has had to keep her vote for Prop8, which would make valid only marriages between men and women by law, a secret. Why? Because her fellow Christians kept comparing her to Ole Chuck Worley (read up), and other Christian leaders who call for making gay marriage permanently illegal, and for making gay people permanently dead.
The problem is, when you do things other people would be ashamed of, keeping the secret is tough. And Halee has had it tougher. She might… she might just cry.
People who support gay marriage view Christians who oppose it as bigoted, backwards, or some variation thereof. I am asking Christians who support legalizing gay marriage to not assume fellow Christians like me are hateful, bigoted, backwards, or just plain mean [like Charles Worley] because we oppose legalizing gay marriage. (Her.Meneutics. Get it? Cuz it’s a Christian blog for women?)
Hear that, you bullies? She is a nice person. Stop calling her mean! She’s not an extreme Christian, just extreme enough to believe that some people deserve more rights than others. If you can’t tell the difference, you need an education, asshole. It isn’t her fault if her god thinks gay people are hellbound sinners that need to be thwarted and tortured in this life in order to preserve life for her and her family in the afterlife.
My lifestyle choice is your problem not mine. I can't think of anyone else that has to deal with this kind of discrimination.
That kind of guilt is way off her shoulders, boy. This is the covenant she made with all of us when we promised to respect her religious beliefs. Are we not going to live up to our promises?
I mean, come on. She fully admits to the tangible, definable similarity between herself and Charles Worley: they both oppose the legal recognition of adult consensual love, commitment, and financial dependence that differs from theirs. Cut her a break, she grants that. It isn’t like she wants to dump them in concentration camps.
They'd just turn it into some fabulous rave party anyway. YOU'RE HERE TO LEARN! and DIE!
If God was on the side of the quiltbags, she would happily agree to a lesser social status for liking the cock. What, should she give up her privileged status just because she was born into it? Why can’t we just accept that she isn’t a bigot just because she opposes legal, Earthly equality for all people? Why doesn’t she get to be considered a Nice Person just because she follows the whims of her chosen supernatural being?
According to Halee, she is not alone, either.
Polls indicate that half if not the majority of voters in the United States support legalizing gay marriage, and yet in all 32 states where gay marriage has been on the ballot, voters have rejected it. I believe this disconnect between what voters tell pollsters and how they vote has to do with how their views are represented by the media—that if they publicly express their discomfort with the legalization of gay marriage, they will be associated with the likes of Charles Worley.
God. Dammit. Now we have to lie about our opinions when we’re anonymous? Where will it end? Thousands of people, secretly denying their God given convictions in statistical polls, just to avoid a little innominate name calling. Kind of reminds you of Mark 14:66-72. You deserve some Ben & Jerry’s, American Christendom. I had no idea what you were going through.
And Halee can talk about this kind of thing. She knows a gay person. And has been to a community college creative writing class.
If anybody ever had angel eyes, it was my baby cousin Brian. His eyes were the color of the Arizona desert sky at high noon, but it wasn’t the color that made them so angelic—it was the way they shimmered when he laughed. Brian had such a sanguine personality it seemed his little body couldn’t contain his joy—his deep belly laughs bubbled over at the smallest provocation. His mother would say she thought it was her job to protect that smile straight through to his adulthood, but I doubt she could’ve predicted what would happen to him.
What happened to this angel, whose eyes burned with the fires of a thousand afternoon suns? He read science fiction and liked musicals. Flowers began to wilt before him as he walked through suburban parks. He began to hover above the pavement he trod, as if the very earth rejected him for his preferences.
His very life became a frozen tundra of Schönberg sophistry.
He became a fag, and chose Hell for the permanent holiday. But the important thing is that Halee loved him, despite his sin. It is universally recognized that, if you have a friend in any given minority, you are set to speak on the subject of their social status. And even though she still loves him, her Christian friends can’t help but point out their perceived flaws in her otherwise glowing personality.
This happens often enough in the media, and it doesn’t need to happen between Christians.
This is a great point. The Media is its own entity, wholly separate from any public sentiment, and concerned only with its own agenda. Glee isn’t on the air because real people identify with the message. CNN doesn’t get advertising dollars by pandering to the widest possible consumer base, it is funded by The Media, for The Media. I don’t think anybody can actually define the term ‘politically correct.’ I think it has something to do with the color tie you can wear at press conferences, but don’t quote me on that.
Halee, darling, no matter what anybody tells you, this is not a time for deep introspection. This is certainly no time to wonder why your friends, neighbors, and the mom who makes the garlic bread for the monthly
Where does a brotha even get that kind of hat in the 20th century?
Chop Suey supper at the church would compare you to a man you rightfully find distasteful. Did Jean-Bedel Bokassa (we are all about the esoteric up in here) quit when people suggested his methods for retaining power were a little ‘Hitleresque.’ Shit no: he put on a hat fit for Flava Flav and committed some crimes against humanity. When they told him his hat was a tad ‘Gagaesque,’ he raped some bitches, commuted his ‘crimes against humanity’ sentence from death to life in prison, and served six years of it. The whole time, he was not Hitler.
Halee, this is no time to consider that plenty of things are legal that your faith doesn’t consider kosher – for instance the practicing of any other religion, or any configuration of your own religion – and this is the thing you want to get pissy about. Forget that your God is changeable; he barely changed from the genocidal mastermind of the Hebrew Scriptures to the scapegoating suicide sin-bomber of the New Testament. It is your friends that have changed, and that is no reason to be a positive influence in your little club. They should have quit the club. Like Jesus did.
"No, you move."
Did you see The Avengers? The best villains are the ones that have a solid truth behind their maniacal actions. “Is not this simpler?” the demi-god demands, as he bends thousands of humans to his will. “Is this nor your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation… You were made to be ruled.” He wasn’t wrong. Captain America’s goal is to inspire people to rise above the baser instincts of humanity, to work for a better, more democratic society. But even he would fight to the death for your right to be simple.
Most of all, this is no time to complete the promising string of neuron firings that got you as far as ‘almost thoughtful, nearly sensitive.’ You are a white, middle class, Christian woman. Only so much harrowing self-reflection be asked of you in a single lifetime. ‘Tis a far lazier thing to do some mental somersaults to justify the opinion you were already told you have. And lazy is the American way.
This is a time for indignation, of the most righteous and brass balliest variety. In a country in which lawmaking and religion are inexplicably separated, it is time to let people know that your opinion matters more than the happiness of other Americans. And you are a nice person for letting them know that.
Christians, please stop bullying other Christians. There are plenty of other, more heathen flavored outlets out there for you.
