--I know that many of my friends, some close, will ultimately see this as an insult, a condemnation, perhaps a continuation from where I have been coming from, at least in rhetoric. The only thing I will say in response is this: I don't hate any of my friends. I love each and every one of them. Sometimes I just really don't like what they stand for.
I was 12 years old when my brother came out of the closet, a term that to this day still bugs me because
ultimately he didn't come out of any closet but instead just realized who he was and was proud of it. If the term "coming out of the closet" means fully respecting yourself for who you are, then so be it. When he came out I was attending a fundamentalist Christian conservative church. I, myself, was never really a conservative but nevertheless that was where I chose to be at that particular time. I was told, well "taught", by one of my elders that a murderer can repent, a rapist can repent, but a sin holier than both of those, than all the others was being a homosexual. God defined it as wrong in his holy scripture. So it was wrong. I remember exactly where I was, who told me, what he said. My brother came out. I disowned him.
Now what does disown him mean at age 12? Well it meant, for me at least, that his soul was sent to eternal damnation. Obviously as anyone who knows me I am not still that naive 12 year old boy. (I'm still naive, but for other stuff). I am a proud ally of the gay community. And by proud ally that doesn't mean that every gay pride day I wear a rainbow pin. It means that in my own way I work daily to fight for equality. (Some days more than others). But before I became the person I came to be today I had to go through four steps along the way. Hatred. Love. Acceptance. Respect.
Hatred is a mixed bag so I will skip over it for the time being and move on to Love. Love, in this context is a dangerous word. Love is a word that allows Christians and Evangelicals to get off the hook. Mark 12:31: Love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no commandment greater than these. See where love becomes sticky? If the second commandment asks you to love your neighbor as you would yourself, many Christians believe that love does not need to come with acceptance. So did I at a young age. I could love my brother because he was my brother. Forget that he is gay and just love him for being related to me. In this context, love is a lie. It is a smokescreen that covers the real problem which is that love isn't caring, understanding, acceptance, but instead love is ignoring. If you love someone you can forget their flaws, as Christians see homosexuality to be a flaw. (I also understand that not all Christians feel this way, so I apologize if you think that I am lumping all under the same umbrella). Love is ignorance. In this case at least.
That is why you need acceptance. Love without acceptance is pure folly. If I were to say that I love you but still know that you will burn in eternal damnation than I really don't love you. I have not accepted who you are because it does not fit my belief system. Your justification is the Bible or the Torah, Book of Mormon, Qu'ran, We look at Islam and say that acts of violence are a bastardization of the Qu'ran, but we don't look the same way when it comes to the Bible? Talk about a double standard. The KKK, Army of God, Christian Identity, Christian Patriot, Lambs of Christ, Concerned Christians, The Covenant, The Sword, and Arm of God, The Freemen Community, all have ties to terrorism and call themselves Christian. Son of Sam murdered 10 women, called himself a born again Christian. Jeffrey Dahmer, Watts, Bruce Lee, The Yorkshire Rapier, all called themselves Christian. And this is the religion that condemns homosexuality? Hitler was a Roman Catholic, Stalin was a Protestant Christian. People look at the book Mein Kampf and consider it responsible for the death of 6 million Jews. How many people have been killed in the name of the Bible? Countless.
All of this is not to say that Christianity is inherently wrong. In each of these religions you can find scripture that calls for love, humanity, kindness, and understanding. However terrorist factions can also find scripture that calls for death, destruction, and judgement. Which brings me to Respect.
My final step in really truly loving my brother was the fact that I came to Respect him. Not because he was gay, but because of who he was and is. Everything, his sexual identity, his intellect, his kindness. I love my brother. We don't talk enough, that is partially his fault, but it is more so mine. I hope this is something I can change in the future. But is it because I love him, no, because I accept him, Hell no. Acceptance is a way of saying that I am better than you, putting myself on a higher plain. I accept you. The reason why I care so much about him is because I love, accept, and respect him. He is my equal. Flawed in his own ways but never, Never because of who he loves. Ultimately what my brother has gone through in some ways makes him my hero. And in learning to truly love him, perhaps I learned how to love myself.
Which brings us to hatred and the jumpstart point for writing this. Earlier this week Jason Collins came out of the closet making him the first MAN in major American professional sports to come out. Collins is a journeyman, 12th man in the NBA. Some critics have condemned him because they think he is using his 'coming out' to save his job. He came out so he could be who he was born to be in public. If part of it was to save his job, so be it. It makes him no different than anyone else on the planet. What I loved about his coming out was that the majority of the league and community reacted positively. What I disliked were a few comments that made national news.
Chris Broussard on Monday's OTL, "I'm a Christian. I don't agree with homosexuality. I think it's a sin, as I think all sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is.... If you're openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be ... that's walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ."
Bryan Fischer on Focal Point (Pundit for AFA). Fischer stated that having "an out, active homosexual" in the locker room would prompt fellow NBA players to avoid being on a team with Collins because he will be "eyeballing" them in the shower.
Tim Brando on Twitter. "I'm hearing Collins is a HERO because he made history! Ok as a Sports Commentator if I make a SEX tape is that History? The word matters ok."
&
"Simple Being a a Christian White male over 50 that's raised a family means nothing in today's culture. The sad truth. Period."
The backlash over the Chris Broussard comments were quite large but even larger was the backlash to the backlash. For many he represent what one of my friends called, "the biblical stance": "It's nice to see someone in the national media take an unpopular (and Biblical) stance, and actually speak out on it. It's also great to see him call out the hypocritical intolerance towards people who are "intolerant" by having their own set of beliefs." The fact that Broussard thinks this way is unfortunate and saddening to me personally but I still choose to tolerate it; much in the same way I choose to tolerate the words of hatred spewed by the KKK because I respect the First Amendment. If anyone called Broussard intolerant, I believe that they are mistaken. If anyone called him ignorant. I would agree. Does this mean that I think all religious views are ignorant? No. Does it mean that I think all views on homosexuality that liken it to an abomination are ignorant? Yes. Ignorance means "a state of misunderstanding or lack of knowledge." In my own belief I think that anyone who uses the bible in the same ways that it was used to defend slavery and racial discrimination is in fact ignorant. Are they terrible people? No. But I will never agree with them. Jason Collins is not 3/5ths of a man.
On Bryan Fischer's statement, I cannot believe that this will be an issue. The immediate thought is that if a homosexual is around men they will immediate start looking at their junk. Are you kidding me? The locker room is as much an office for athletes as anywhere else. Perhaps Fischer is referring to the fact that 39 states can still fire you entirely because you are gay. The logic behind locker room mentality is entirely bogus. A locker room is not inherently sexual. It is rather inherently smelly.
And Tim Brando. This is the one that bothers me the most. First of all how does a gay athlete change anything about being a Christian White Male over 50. It doesn't. As most Religious followers would tell you the most important relationship is a personal one between yourself and God. How does someone else's lifestyle play into your own life? The real problem with his comments is that he compares a sex tape to Hero, claiming that Collins is not a hero. I, personally, do not feel that he is a hero, but do feel he did something heroic. 1/3rd of teenage suicides are linked to sexual identity and over 60% of children put into child rescues are kicked out because of sexual identity. If one child does not die because they look up to Jason Collins and his actions…that's heroic.
This is a topic that is quite obviously at the forefront of my thought process. I feel that our real problem comes from the binary. Heteronormality is a theory that deals with sex and gender from a hetero perspective. The dominant culture is viewed through the lens of heteronormality. To be straight is to be normal. To be male is normal, while to be 'other' is to be odd or as it were queer. From this perspective the binary is the problem, the narrative exists not because it is true but rather because of hegemonic practices that an individual imposes a mythical perception of that narrative on themselves. Irigaray looks at this issue through the logic of sameness meaning that society looks at woman as man's other. This narrative becomes an issue because the binary is entirely hegemonic with such examples as woman to man or straight to gay. Another issue that this raises is that although sex, gender, and sexual orientation are three entirely separate things; sex dealing with biology, gender dealing with cultural behavior, and sexual orientation dealing with sexual attraction, too often does society view the biological issue of sex through heteronormality. Male, female, and intersex should be viewed through biology not through a binary that opposes male and female and labels intersex as the other or as an outlier. Gay should not be synonymous with the lesser. The binary must be struck down between 'gay' vs. 'straight.'
This is a hot button issue. It will be debated for a long time to come and I will always be willing to have a conversation on the topic, but three things are certain to me: Being Gay is not unnatural, it's part of human DNA, under the law human beings should be able to love amy type of person, and I love my brother. Oh. And I love you too.
P.S. Congrats to Rhode Island and Delaware…C'mon Minnesota!
