This post was submitted by ejacksonindc

In this week’s The Reluctant Activist, Ed answers the TNG staff survey question by explaining there is no conflict between his religious views and his sexual orientation.

God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.

(Note: My Mom got on me about my language in past columns. So, I’m sorry I used foul language to express my views. TNG readers deserve better, and there will be no more swearing in my columns, unless I am writing about Ann Coulter.)

Generally, I enjoy the staff survey questions, but the one two weeks ago left me a little perplexed. The question was, “What has been your queer experience with organized religion? Do you think it is ever possible to reconcile your queer and religious identities?” First, I have been pretty consistent about the fact that I do not buy into the idea of disparate identities and limiting one’s self based entirely on a label. Among other things, I am Black, a man, a Christian, and gay. Eliminating any one of those parts would be like removing a tire from a car and still expecting it to get you safely from one destination to another. Those four things no more define me than tires define a car.

If by “organized religion” the question is referring to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc., then, at first, my “queer experience” was contentious. I went to a strict, Southern Baptist school in Texas where Bible study was the first subject every morning. We prayed at least five times a day and had chapel on Fridays, which didn’t exempt us from Sunday school and Sunday services. Hell fire and the monumental weight of God’s wrath were constantly borne by my pre-teen shoulders. My religious upbringing destroyed my relationship with God, and during the years I spent coming to terms with my sexual orientation, I believed God was vindictive, wrathful and petty.

Then, I saw the FOX made-for-television movie, “Doing Time on Maple Drive.” There is a scene at the end in which the dad asks his son what he will say when people tell him homosexuality is a sin. The son didn’t know, and I realized neither did I. I figured I should find out. I didn’t have to change my views about God, but I did need to be able to answer that question because it was going to come up. I did live in Texas after all.

In addition to being gay, my faith in the “infallible word of God” took another potentially lethal blow. In college, I was introduced to a 16th or 17th century version of the “curse of Ham.” Noah’s son Ham looked at Noah while he was naked. As a punishment, Ham and all of his descendants were cursed to forever be slaves. The version of the curse I read gave an extremely detailed description of Ham’s progeny, assigning them the stereotypical features attributed to a cartoonish, mocking version of people of African heritage. I could not believe that God would force an entire race, or, more specifically me, to be slaves with no hope or chance of freedom. If the Bible had been wrong about the slave thing, I became pretty confident it had to be wrong about the gay thing as well.

In my search for answers, I came across a book entitled Hebrew Myths of the Bible. It was written by Jewish scholars to debunk the various ways individuals and groups had manipulated Biblical text and then attributed the distortions to the Jewish people.

As it turns out, the more explicit version of the curse had been added to justify the European slave trade, but that got me thinking. If that particular bit of scripture had been added and removed, what other ways might the Bible have been turned into a tool used to oppress and conquer? That question led me to throw all the religion that had been either beaten or scared into me out the window. My Grandmother has always told me that God expects us to read the Bible with “understanding.” Some Christian denominations believe that the average person is not capable of understanding the Bible and should therefore rely entirely on the church to accurately interpret scripture.

I decided to take my Grandmother’s approach. I started asking the questions I wanted answered, and I didn’t limit myself to words that, over the centuries, had been transcribed by hand and translated dozens of times from languages that no longer exist. When I removed the go-between and started figuring things out on my own, I found that there are truths in the Bible.

One of them is that I have nothing to reconcile. God made me exactly the way I am, and He wants me to be happy. He wants us to be happy. I respect that some people read the same words and reach completely different conclusions. It’s not for me to judge one way or another. The path to finding my faith belongs to me, and if I expect people to respect my experiences, then I need to respect theirs, and I do. In the process, people of all religions, faith traditions, agnostics and atheists have contributed to my views in positive ways that have enriched my relationship with God.

Fundamentalists and evangelicals denounce me as a new, “liberal” Christian. They mean politically liberal, not liberal in my understanding of scripture. They question my faith because I don’t vote straight ticket republican and because I believe Christ’s message is for us to create the world we want to live in by being good to one another. I don’t question their faith. I question their interpretation and their motivation. Are they trying to find salvation or to get republicans elected to office?

Summarily, and this won’t come close to explaining the complexity of my faith, but I think it is impossible to love freely and to consistently be kind to others if the only reason you are doing it is to avoid burning in the fiery pits of hell, a place that’s supposed to be so gruesome it makes the third panel in Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” seem like a day of watching the baby pandas at the National Zoo.

I’ve also learned that one of the worst things the Christian faithful can do is behave in a way that causes others to turn their backs on God. Sometimes, I get angry thinking about the queer kids who’ve allowed their spiritual beliefs to shrivel into an understandably defensive posture because some “Christian” told them that God does not love them. I know that Christianity doesn’t work for everyone. There are many other ways to find inner peace and your own personal truth, but, for those who choose to follow the path of Christianity, being hateful and bigoted in the name of God is wrong on every imaginable level.

I’m not trying to convert or convince anyone of anything regarding Christianity. However, I would encourage LGBTQ people to figure out what you are going to say when people tell you you are going to hell. Sure, you can tell them to f-off or mock them for being a lemming, but what if you remembered they are a human being also. They have messed up views, but, by being a jerk, we only reinforce their belief that we aren’t worthy of equal treatment. What if we fed our souls with kindness and love and responded to them, at least at first, in a way that is reflective of the way we want to be treated? Before you say no, just think about it. We work out our bodies. We feed our stomachs and find ways to entertain our minds, but when was the last time you actually did something that made your heart sing, that made you smile, that made you feel good about yourself, and that gave you the courage to say, “I am going to be nice no matter how big a jerk this other guy is?”

I still have to work on that last one, but one thing I will never spend another second thinking about is whether or not I need to reconcile my sexual orientation with my religious views. The Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he can’t imagine us getting to heaven and God saying, “You can’t come in because you are a woman. You can’t come in because you are black.” That is the way God made them, so it makes no sense to him that God would say, “You can’t come in because you are a homosexual.” He said that is the way God made LGBTQ people as well.

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