Somewhere in my stuff I have this magazine cartoon showing a minister walking out of church with a female congregant. In the cartoon, the minister, who is holding a Bible, looks at the woman and confides, "between you and me, I hate the sinner as much I hate the sin."
Today I was conversing with a friend via email about the Civil Unions Bill currently pending in Hawaii's legislature. My friend, who is one of Hawaii's legislators, believes the Bill is going to die in committee. But he also noted that much of the email he was getting in opposition to the Bill evidenced a disturbing dislike for "others" in general, not merely homosexuals.
For some reason, my friend's comments reminded me of that cartoon. Don't get me wrong; I think my friend is right. But I also think there is something uniquely worrisome about the fact that Christians have been able to convince themselves that we "love the sinner" and only "hate the sin." If we were truly honest with ourselves, most of us would have to side with the Pastor in the cartoon.
The best evidence for this is that, in all of the debate on the issue, you will rarely, if ever, here an opponent of gay marriage or civil unions express the slightest concern for the needs and desires of homosexuals. Their well-being counts for nothing. Their lives and loves and relationships count for naught and are given absolutely no weight whatsoever in the public policy analysis.
To the contrary, even the slightest perceived threat to the well-being of heterosexuals and their relationships, however remote or hysterical, is taken to be utterly dispositive.
It hard to credibly claim to love a group of people whose welfare is of no consequence to us. How can we credibly claim to love people whose welfare and needs we have never seriously considered - ever!
But even more worrisome is the fact that we Christians have convinced ourselves of that very fact. You don't believe me? Go up to a group of Christians at your church and say something like "you know what, I think we hate homosexuals after all." Shrieks of protest will follow. Shrieks!
I've done it. Twice! Shriek's both times!
And yet, those very same people will stand in the hot Hawaiian sun for hours at a time in order to prevent Hawaii from extending legal support to gay unions. And they'll do this without considering, for one minute, how their success will worsen the lives of Gay people in our State.
That's love?
Between you and me . . .
Joe H.
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It Is Accomplished
8 years ago
1 comment:
it's interesting to me that people who have written are oblivious to how abstractly they treat gays and lesbians -- as if these residents were mainly transplants from the mainland, or simply abnormal abominations. . . love the sinner but hate the sin indeed.
I have responded to people from my community with some thoughts borrowed from MUT because they deserve to hear my reasoning:
Thank you for your email expressing your position on the Civil Unions bill, and your religious beliefs regarding marriage. The House voted to pass HB 444 in February; the bill is currently under consideration by the State Senate []. The House has moved on to work on other legislation aimed at addressing the pressing problems of our economy and the needs of our neighbors who have lost jobs or who may lose jobs in the coming months, and bills which will are considering how to strengthen [] hospital, [ ] Community College and our public schools.
But whether or not HB 444 is adopted, Hawaii's marriage law will continue to limit marriage to a union between one man and one woman, and all State benefits conferred on married couples will only flow to the man and woman in such marriages. The proposed bill makes no change to the statute as adopted by the legislature in the wake of the constitutional amendment vote of a decade ago. However, I believe laws conferring benefits to Hawaii citizens should be applied in a way that impacts all our residents and taxpayers, in similar circumstances, equally. You mention the purpose of marriage is procreation but the State certainly does not bar couples who cannot bear children from entering matrimony.
I voted for HB 444 for human compassion and social justice reasons. Whether or not those kinds of partnerships are consistent with our personal or religious beliefs, we all live in communities where same-sex relationships exist. Gay and lesbians certainly existed in the evangelical church I grew up in on []. I support Civil Unions because I'm convinced that encouraging all our citizens to form marital relationships is sound public policy consistent with our basic American value of equal justice under the law. HB 444 is based on similar Civil Union statutes adopted in Connecticut and Vermont.
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You should also keep in mind that gays and lesbians are not asking society for the legal right to marry everyone they love (as might polygamists) or anyone they love (as some who want to marry siblings, children, or animals might theoretically be asking). Gays and lesbians are only asking for the same right that heterosexuals have - the right to marry someone they love.
The right to marry one person that you love.
Marriage benefits us as a community precisely because it conditions its benefits upon the solemn promises of spouses to mutually meet very specific responsibilities to one another. the occasion of a wedding is not merely a celebration of love. it is a ceremony in which two people stand before their loved ones, their closest friends, and society at large (in the form of the law), and exchange promises of love, support, and faithfulness "for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part." and these are promises that everyone present (rightly) expects them to keep (or to at least try to keep).
That being said, I have no quarrel with people who differ on same sex marriage due to deeply held religious beliefs. But I believe that the heart of the Gospel message that my family follows remains Love: love of God, love of our family, and love of our neighbors, including the gays and lesbians in our communities. I have enough faith, humility and understanding to believe that the success or failure of my own marriage depends more on the work and love I pour into it than whether or not we as a community, and as a legislature and government, exclude other citizens from entering the same kind of union. The strength or weakness of my own family depends more on the values I demonstrate through my own actions than in dictating those values to others outside of my own family. And the decisions I make on legislation must consider the entire community and not just the narrow viewpoints of my own circle of friends and fellow believers.
Thank you for providing your comments.
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