As a person who spent more than half my life in a country, Jamaica, known for its strong anti-gay sentiments the question of the origins of anti-gay sentiments has been a recurring subject of my personal musings (and I will spare you the “some of my best-friends are ____ routine).” So far I have come to believe that the same variables that supported the Crusades, the slaughter of the natives of “the Americas,” slavery, Jim Crow, “one hundred years of lynching” mostly carried out at church picnics, legalized beatings of women and children, the millions of American Christians that were members of the KKK in the twentieth century, Holocaust, and our continued segregated church in America, result in the justification of the death penalty for homosexuals. The two chief conditions are: 1. a system of thought that views difference as inherently dangerous and warranting a pre-emptive strike or exploitable- a tool to be used for our benefit, 2. unchallenged socializing agents/ agencies that buttress the aforementioned evolutionary or sinful impulses.
I know some will argue that homosexuality is a moral issue, a sin according Scriptures. But this response clouds the issue rather than sheds light on it for me. First many of those who make the above claim also advocate for psychology programs (such as Exodus) to cure homosexuals, so is it a sin or sickness? A more consistent argument is offered by those who view homosexuality as a wrong choice according to Scriptures. I am aware of the frequently quoted list of prohibited sexual acts from Leviticus: incest, sexual intercourse with menstruating woman, a neighbour’s wife, another male or animals. But I am also aware that the Hebrew people whose blessing from God was to grow from a small family to a people “as numerous as the sand of the sea” placed a premium on the procreative aspect of sexuality. Hence, any sexual encounter that did not have procreation as the goal was taboo; Onan’s spilling his seed on the ground when copulating with his dead brother’s wife, Tamar, resulted in his death. Later Pauline text provide an explicit rationale, Roman 1 indicates that homosexuality is unnatural but Pauline writers also argue in Corinthians 11 that short hair in women is unnatural (think of the kinky delicate African hair that readily breaks and was popular in Sub-Saharan Africa at that time and is still on my head). So what does unnatural really mean?
So I guess I understand why Christians are divided on the subject of homosexuality but the visceral, fierce, hate-like response is something else. I can recall myself as a fourteen year old girl who gleefully pledged to participate in a violent anti-homosexuality rally to counter a rumoured pro -homosexual rally (fortunately for me neither came to pass). I was not consumed by the zeal of the Lord rather as a product of a mixed ethnicity, bipartisan, heritage the only people I could legitimately hate were homosexuals. Had I really been filled with the love of Jesus I would have treated “the sin” of homosexuality the same way Jesus did all sins; give up power over, incarnate, carry the cross, and as I am not Jesus point people to him- the only Truth.
Renegade- learning to hang around
