blog@cliffdweller

It doesn't do any good for me to make a post like this. No one who reads it will disagree with it. The people who need to read it wont. And if they do, they'll just dismiss it all as sour grapes.

But the truth is I am really tired of christian breeders trying to tell me I'm a bad person for being gay.

Some of my best friends are Christians. Some of my best friends either have babies or are having babies soon. These are not the people I'm talking about when I say christian breeder.

The christian breeder is someone who lives his or her life in accordance with what they want to believe at any given moment, and then start screaming about families being all about people who can procreate together.

Ahem, doesn't pairing up for the purpose of procreation put humans on the same level as, say, a dog? or a cow? or a snake?

The only theological debate I ever had with my father that ended with him agreeing to my point was after he told me a certain AIDS patient was not going to be going to Heaven. I pulled the car over and stopped on the shoulder of interstate 30 in Dallas, and told him that the last time I looked in the Bible it didn't say anything about Rev. Adams choosing who gets into Heaven or not. He later apologized to me and agreed that I was right.

I'm not a Bible scholar, and I don't often find places I want to quote in the Bible when I am looking at it. But I have never seen anything in The Bible anywhere that suggests that people are supposed to be equals of animals. Everything I see there suggests that we are capable of having a richer, fuller life. That we can learn to cope with things that upset us and forgive people who do mean things to us.

I've never seen anything in The Bible that suggests I will be going to hell because I am gay. I've never seen anything that even suggests I am sinning by being gay. And I've looked.

So, to all the "holier-than-thou" christians out there who believe I have made a choice, I say this: stop it. Believe what you want but don't step on my rights. I'm not going to change what you choose to believe any more than you are going to change what I am.

Remember, Jesus didn't say a single word about homosexuality. Not one. Zip. Nada. but he did say divorce is a sin. Getting married a second time ranks right up there with adultery. All the preachers I'm related to have been married more than once. All the ones I"m related to and are still living have been through divorce and then remarried. How many holy rollers who condemn me for being gay have been divorced and/or remarried? do I condemn them? No. Because I am a capital C Christian who believes that it's not my place to condemn anyone. Ever. No matter what. Period.

Folks, I know this is a tough one to understand, because we are all human after all, but Jesus Christ forgives us every single day for our misgivings. He forgives us for breaking the 10 commandments. He forgives us for choosing to eat too much and getting fat. He forgives us for doing stupid things and being forgetful. He even forgives us for pretending to represent him and judging other people, even though he expressly told us not to. And if being gay were a sin, he'd forgive us for that too.

So believe whatever you want about your personal favorite translation of the hurtful words in your bible. I challenge you to go back to the source. Learn the original languages and read the originals for yourself. Stop repeating what some hack has told you it says, and find out for yourself. Go do that. or don't. But in either case, stop trying to change me. Just go away and leave me alone.