The Hypocrisy of Bigotry

As I watched the testimonies for and against the DC Marriage Equality and Religious Freedom act, what troubled me the most were all the brown faces testifying against equality. Most of their arguments were religious-based and included declarations of what "God" wants and what the Bible says. It is baffling that in the face of the immense discrimination that we have suffered as African Americans, there are still people ready to throw stones at another group who is discriminated against.

I'm an urban twenty-something, very likely half the age of the majority of anti-equality testifiers; but I grew up in a world where race was as much a factor as it wasn't. I was called a nigger at the early age of six, and though I knew it was wrong, it didn't stop me from being friends with people from every culture. People in my generation, for the most part, don't view race as starkly as people in my mother's generation do. In our world, discrimination is not about black versus white, it's about oppression versus anti-oppression. Yes, there are cultural disparages, even in the gay movement, but at the end of the day, what separates us is pro-LGBT and Anti-LGBT ideals.

That premise blends the color line drastically. In regards to the DC equality movement, you have people of all cultures advocating for equal rights and people of one predominate culture advocating against it: the African American religious fringe. This is particularly ironic, given that a majority of black congregations have a sizable LGBT population. And besides the obvious Stockholm syndrome of LGBT members of anti-gay churches, the history of Christianity and oppression in the black community should be argument enough for the opposition to take a look at what their argument is really saying.

African Americans didn't come here preaching Christianity. We were brought in chains, we were ripped from our language, our families, our culture, and our spiritual beliefs. Christianity was forced upon us by slave owners as a means to dissipate any potential unity. Fast forward three hundred years or so, Blacks were made to believe they had to straighten their hair, get rid of their slang, and assimilate fully into mainstream culture to be regarded as human. They could not marry someone of a different race, hell up until the 19th century, blacks were only 3/5 of a person. All of these institutions, anti-miscegenation, slavery, and voting rights were supported and prolonged by religious ideologies. Those same ideologies that said in essence, "you are the other; in order to be tolerated, you must be invisible". This is where the civil rights movement and the equal rights movement bear close resemblance.

By refusing to acknowledge LGBT people and relationships, we send a message that LGBT people are somehow the other. Black LGBT people, suffer the impact of marginalization two-fold, dealing with bigotry not only from racial discrimination, but from religious persecution. The same people who withstood fire hoses and beatings, who see what hate crimes and intolerance do to a people, have the audacity to seek to marginalize another group of people in the name of a "lord" that wasn't theirs to begin with. We as a people need to wake up and start acknowledging that the hatred for our gay brothers and sisters is doing nothing but perpetuating the denigration of our culture, killing our women, and holding us back from reaching Martin Luther King Jr's "promise land."

For more information on homophobia in Black churches, please join Metropolitan Network Against Homophobia for a panel discussion. 6:30 PM on Tuesday, November 10th at The Sumner School 1201 17th Street NW Washington, DC Inside Lecture Hall 102. More information can be found here: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/eve/1446274447.html

My Beef With Religion

Before you take out your pitchforks, which I’m sure some of you are already brandishing, let me clarify my delightfully ostentatious title. I am not, nor have I ever been against faith; I consider myself a person of faith. My qualm is with the institution itself.

I was born into a Catholic family and thus raised Catholic; I declared myself non-denominational once I left the nest and have since reaffirmed my belief system to be purely spiritual. Like the rest of humanity, I am a product of indoctrination so I will never tell someone their faith is wrong unless they use their belief system to justify hating or hurting someone else.

There are some major things I don’t get about religious institutions and some minor things; one of the biggest has to be the assertion that one is better than the other. I am no self-proscribed theologian but what I know about all major religions is that they all have a sense of purpose outlined for their brethren; a kind of guide to where they fit in with the rest of the world. If so, then why profess that your “God” is better than their god? Aren’t we all talking about the same being? Why are your doctrines better than others? Why is your religion the “real truth” and everyone else’s false? Doesn’t that undermine the very ideology of faith? “The belief in something that you consider true,” is the same definition every other person of faith occupies.

It always seemed weird to me that people felt it was bashing God to go and survey some other denomination’s service. The people at the other service haven’t burst into flames yet, why would you? In fact, viewing other ways people perceive their faith can only strengthen yours. If you take everything at face value and never question what I like to call the “prophetic rhetoric” you are not faithful, you are complacent.

That same blind complacency leads to fear, intolerance and yes H8TE (those of you up on the times know why I chose to spell it that way). Personally, I would think some being of divine, cosmic proportion would be above simple human feelings and emotions (i.e. vengeance, jealously, rage, etc.). I find it funny how a person can stand on a soapbox and preach that God destroyed one place or another for whatever reason and in the same breath denounce Greek mythology other polytheistic religions with similar theories.

There’s also the issue of Christian denominations; why the variance? If Jesus Christ supposedly set the record straight, why are there different strokes for different folks? This speaks clearly to the truth argument; how can some pick the parts of the bible they want to follow and others pick different parts, then both say their way is THE way?

Trust me, I’m all for you loving your God and worshiping him/her/it and being thankful for his/hers/its gifts; but as someone who identifies as simply spiritual I don’t want your beliefs imposed upon me. I love having discussions about religion within reason; the line gets drawn when someone says, “(Insert divinity here) said …” Did you get some kind of message from this deity? Did they send you an IM on AOL? No, of course not, that would be absurd, right? Then why do people constantly fall under discrimination and condemnation for what a deity “says”.

Let’s take a current issue; a same-sex marriage ban just recently, and I think illegally, passed in California by people who lied to Californians and then justified it with religious reasons. It was their duty to protect the tradition of marriage as God intended. Not to be crass but WTF? The tradition of monogamous marriage was created and indoctrinated for social/financial reasons, as are most institutions in the world. Know why priests can’t get married anymore? The Vatican decided that their money should go back to them and not to the priest’s widows upon their death. If you don’t believe me, Google it.

Look, the marriage preservation argument was used a couple of years ago (listen up people of color) during the anti-miscegenation trials. But let’s pop out of our bubble for a moment to look at the history of marriage. Before it was backed by the church, it was a social practice in which a man would take a wife, or many (yes, we were property ladies) in order to produce an heir to his fortune or for other reasons. Often daughters were sold for land, crops, etc. Divorce was legalized and outlawed several times and it always came down to money. The argument was simple, the man will impregnate the woman, they’ll have a kid and they will have to spend more money.

What baffles me is people’s asinine belief that they are somehow making the world a better place by denying rights to other human beings, that they are doing “God’s work”. First of all, God supposedly doesn’t like gay sex anymore than he likes shellfish. Yet people conveniently skip over that part in order to protect their right to eat crabs. And homosexuality, a word that wasn’t created until the late 19th century, could not possibly be in the bible, anywhere! If anything, Jesus talks about the values of loving one another as you would love yourself. I think if God hated the gays there wouldn’t be 20 and 30-year couples in loving relationships with families. I don’t see how someone can say that having a deep, intimate love and respect for someone is somehow wrong in the eyes of God.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s a tragedy when people let their religion trump their humanity. No good can come of oppression, and no truth can come of blind complacency. People of all faiths should be able to break bread with the understanding that though their faiths may vary, the tolerance and affirmation of their way of life is a main course everyone can stomach.