Conservative Christians And Gay People example essay topic

Gay is Okay! Should gays be treated with the same respect as all other people? Conservative Christians and gay people are going at it again. They never seem to tire of this war. Only few Christians have the guts to admit that they believe that all gays should be treated with the same respect as any other people!

It seems that only a person with a number of gay and lesbian friends and acquaintances can realize the importance of getting to know the people behind the labels and images society makes; and their experience of building connections with people of many different backgrounds and personal differences has been both challenging and tremendously rewarding. Why do some Christians seem to need a stereotypical enemy, bogeyman, or group caricature that represents all that is wrong with the world? Perhaps some Christians are, seeing themselves, as the representatives of Christ on earth, need some group to target as the representatives of Satan. Perhaps they also secretly fear that they themselves are not good enough for God, which they themselves deserve to be punished in hell, that God does not really love them, or that they cannot rely on such love since they most likely do not deserve it. This fear may lead them to project this view of themselves as evil and undeserving outward onto some group of demonized others. Such people do not seem to believe that Divine Love is unconditional, that there is no need for anyone to earn it, that Divine Grace, like the rain, falls on the just and the unjust alike -- and so they cannot trust in the surety of Divine Love nearly so much as they rely on the certainty of Divine Judgment.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990's and the nuclear arms race has effectively stalled, new enemies are taking the place of the communist demons, including feminists, Muslims, Pagans and gays. And so, unfortunately drama is being rewritten, including impressive flourishes describing earthquakes and hurricanes as expressions of God's wrath at the presence of gay people in U.S. society. In reference to supposed Biblical proscriptions against homosexuality, any Bible-reader knows that stealing is also condemned in the Bible; but you never see militant religious believers carrying signs that read god hates looters, however, you do see them with signs that god hates gays! God does say in the Bible that he doesn't except people judging other people, for they are all his creation and when the time comes then he will judge them but until then we should live together, loving each other as brother and sister. Some feel that most Christians approve of using God's Word, as an excuse to humiliate, insult and generally debase other people that God himself created is a terrible thing, and one cannot think so. As the Christian religion teaches, God loves everyone and he created everything on this earth.

If he didn't like homosexuals there probably wouldn't be any. Just a thought, homosexuals do have feelings and beliefs just like everyone else. Gays are human, they are not some sorts of weird life form that is here to destroy the earth and make everyone like us. They strive for rights.

Rights that everyone else has that they don't. Marriage, help against hate crimes, and living. Myth: Homosexuality is a sin. Facts: The Bible contains six passages, which condemn homosexual behavior. The Bible also contains numerous passages condemning heterosexual behavior. Theologians and Biblical scholars continue to differ on many Biblical interpretations.

They agree on one thing, however. Jesus said absolutely nothing at all about homosexuality. Among the many things deemed an abomination is adultery, incest, wearing clothing made from more than one kind of fiber, and eating shellfish, like shrimp and lobster. Religion has often been misused to justify hatred and oppression. Less than half a century ago, Baptist churches (among others) in this country defended racial segregation on the basis that the Bible condoned it.

Early Christians were not hostile to homosexuals. Intolerance became the dominant attitude only after the Twelfth Century. Today, many people no longer tolerate generalizations about homosexuality as pathology or sin. Few would condemn heterosexuality as immoral - despite the high incidence of rape, incest, child abuse, adultery, family violence, promiscuity, and venereal disease among heterosexuals. Fortunately, many within organized religions are beginning to address the homophobia of the church. The National Council of Churches of Christ, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Unitarian Universalism Association, the Society of Friends (Quakers), and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches support full civil rights for gay men and lesbians, as they do for everyone else.

Myth: AIDS is God's judgment on homosexuals. Facts: Was Polio God's condemnation of children? Is Sickle Cell Anemia God's judgment of Blacks? Homosexual men were one of the first populations in this country to contract the disease, but they did not cause the disease. Although AIDS was originally transmitted through heterosexual contact in Central Africa, African people also did not cause the disease. Any population, once exposed, will be affected.

The disease is the enemy, not those who are ill. AIDS does not discriminate. Those who promote the notion that AIDS is a divine judgment against homosexuals fail to point out that lesbians have the lowest incidence of AIDS of any group. ("Homophobia- What are we so afraid of?" The Lesbian & Gay Public Awareness Project. 1991.) In such a fearful state, people cannot get to know those on whom they project there own 'evil-consciousness'; they cannot even really see them as human beings.

They certainly cannot perceive how these people feel when some of them are vilified, assaulted, even murdered because of who they are and whom they love. In Laramie, Wyoming, a homosexual student from the University of Wyoming was, according to the LA Times, 'brutally beaten, burned and left tied to a wooden ranch fence like a scarecrow with grave injuries, including a smashed skull, authorities said. A passerby by found the victim, Matthew Shepard, 22, near death half a day after the attack. He was unconscious and his skull had been smashed with a handgun. He also appeared to have suffered burns on his body and cuts on his head and face. The temperature had dropped to the low 30's.

This poor young boy later died at the hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado'. How is this right? Matthew Shepard died for the soul reason that he was gay. In San Francisco, 144 aggravated assaults against gays and lesbians were reported to the police. Based on estimates that there are 3 times as many crimes as are reported to the police, making the estimate 432 in 1995, or 1.2 gay bashing's each day. How can any person feel that this is okay?

Is it also okay for a person to be removed from a job that they enjoy and care a lot o about because of their sexual preference? According to, Service members Legal Defense Network, quoted in The Advocate (April 15, 1997), the number of service members discharged under the don't ask, don't tell policy in 1996 are: Branch Discharges Ratio USMC 60 1 out of 3,000 Army 206 1 out of 2,400 Air Force 282 1 out of 1,400 Navy 302 1 out of 1,400 The Corps is less likely to have Gay men and Lesbians in its ranks (unlikely). The Corps is also more likely to discharge for other reasons (if true, a more humane way of dealing with the issue, since a 'dishonorable discharge' can bar the service member from other jobs). So in other words they make excuses up for discharging gays so they don't look so discriminatory towards these young men that want to fight for our country. The only cure for this problem is a highly significant ideological shift. Religious people of all persuasions need to stop seeing themselves as horrible monsters that committed a major sin merely by being born human (as if any of us had any say in that matter).

Today's society needs to realize that it cannot earn Divine Love and Grace because there is no NEED to earn such things; and certainly cannot win Divine Love or approval by hurting others. Divine Grace and Love are not transactions that need to be paid for. Society also need to understand how it has hurt people by projecting its own insecurities and inner demons onto them, to stop behaving thus, and get to know as people the very people society is told are 'undesirables. ' Many are also in deep need of spiritual healing. Some need to spend more time observing the life of the natural world, and to accept that we have been created with a joy in living and that these can take many forms that were not understood by people who wrote religious texts several thousand years ago. Change and variety are among the few constants in our universe, and humans are made to express infinite variety in every aspect of our personalities, including our sexuality.

This is how it should be, if the human species is to survive and flourish. How else is anyone supposed to love, if not the way they already do as individuals?