Angels and Demons

Pope Benedict is smoking something.  Part of the reason I left the Church after high school was I couldn’t reconcile the attitude that the pontiff displayed in his celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth yesterday.  And I look to the continued vitriol dripping from the purpose-driven pastor, and the legislation by the former special prosecutor, and the actions of my country in the United Nations, and I fear for humanity.

With all the threats to the human species: the destruction of the planet by technological deterioration; the destruction of the planet by military excess; the decimation of the ecosystem by apathy; the depopulation through greed, causing starvation, rampant disease, and the execution of millions which repeats each decade when a new oppressed group seizes weapons and power and takes out their grievances on their oppressors, the head of the Catholic Church decides that he needs to attack those whom the Almighty has blessed with sexuality.

With a smarmy, poorly-written play on words making homosexuality equal to deforestation, Benedict further rode down the path of intolerance, ignorance, hate and division.  Merry Christmas.  Had global warming been a greater issue fifty years ago, I’m certain that he would have equated saving the rainforest with keeping the races segregated; the same way the Vatican spoke so eloquently about helping persecuted Jews during World War II; and the Holy See spoke up during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which saw Africa pillaged and Africans enslaved and scattered across the globe in a diaspora which still hasn’t been rectified.  Why does The Roman Catholic Church, THE institution of God’s love on planet earth, miss the larger points in favor of banning women from preaching the gospel, and forbidding priests to marry?

I believe in God.  And I believe in the possibility of people.  What I have trouble with, and this is where mega pastors who preach hate, from Farrakhan to Warren, catch hell is that they preach to the small mind, they pick and choose which words of God they want to listen to, they fail to grasp the message and instead cling to the syllables that were written by men just like them.

The Pope is preaching hate, no matter what language and no matter what context.  He is preaching division and intolerance.  The celebration of Jesus’ birth (“He’s the reason for the season,” as my aunt likes to say) is supposed to be a time of love, understanding, renewal, companionship, and awe at the miracles that each of us as an individual is, and who we have to thank for that gift.  It’s not about the toys we can accumulate, or the flat screens we can acquire.  And it’s definitely not about raising ourselves up by stepping on and keeping others down.  It’s about celebrating the angels, in ourselves and each other, not demonizing others.

Why do people forget that?

Jesus would stand with oppressed

California Attorney General Jerry Brown Asks Court To Overturn Prop 8

U.S. balks at decriminalizing homosexuality

Pope’s message angers lots of people

Gay is the new Black.

On a day when we are celebrating Barack Hussein Obama’s election as the first black president and the forty-fourth president of the United States, we are also mourning the fact that those who have benefited most from the struggle against discrimination are now wielding the bludgeon themselves.  While half of the white voters in California opposed Proposition 8 (the attempt to marginalize and discriminate against a minority population based on what makes them a minority), and half of the Latino population as well, fully seven in ten black voters supported taking away people’s right to marry each other.

I have many friends who are black.  I have friends who are gay.  I have some friends who are both.  I don’t believe that any of them should be told that they can or cannot do something simply because of those facts.  However, I have had to argue with my black friends that they shouldn’t be practicing discrimination, shouldn’t be supporting the legal differentiation between people.  They should know better, if they know anything about the history of the United States.

Civil Rights Protestors in California

“Laws prohibiting miscegenation [marriage between people of different races] in the United States date back as early as 1661 and were common in many states until 1967.”

Proposition 8 on the California ballot is another miscegenation law.  Plain and simple.  And if you don’t understand that, let me explain in another way how gay is the new black.

When my grandfather, a black man born in 1921 in Monroe, Lousiana, joined the Army of the United States, he was placed and fought in a segregated unit.  His commanding officer was white, by Army regulations.  He was not allowed to mix with, serve with, fight with, bleed with, and in some cases, die with, white soldiers because he was black.  President Truman finally ended this ridiculous practice with an executive order, and today black white brown yellow red and all other colors and types serve the United States of America in the armed services without restriction.  We also have soldiers of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and many other religious affiliations serving, because discrimination based on ethnicities, based on religious beliefs, based on who people are is wrong.

In 1992, Bill Clinton came into office promising to finally remove the last “okay” discrimination, so that gay Americans could serve their country without fear of retribution, prosecution or expulsion because of their sexual orientation.  He copped out, giving us “Don’t ask, Don’t tell.”  Gay men and women are now allowed to serve in the armed forces of the United States, but only if they hide their sexuality.  They are not allowed to be themselves, share their lives with their fellow soldiers, read a magazine that appeals to their natures publicly, for fear of discharge.  If they keep their “secret”, they are allowed to serve our country.  They are discriminated against.  Gay is the new black.

A friend of mine argues that homosexuality is wrong because of his religious beliefs.  I disagree with his interpretation, but I accept his right to that belief.  Even then, Proposition 8 is wrong.  It’s wrong because in this country, you are not married by your church, or synagogue, or mosque.  In order to be married, you have to get a license from the State.  If you don’t get legal permission from the government, you are not married.  I know that many people feel that that part is the formality, and that the church service is the important part – but don’t you remember after you came down from the altar, going in the back with the minister and the witnesses, and signing your marriage certificate?  Doesn’t the minister also say, “by the power vested in me by the state of                                     “?  Marriage today is not the sole province of the church, though it is still a sacrament and it is sacred.

Proposition 8 is another us and them. It’s Plessy v. Ferguson in 2008.  It’s the Fugitive Slave Law for the modern “others”, those people who are looked at by the majority as THEM. The question, then, is this: are you on the side of the slave catchers, or on the side of the slaves?  Are you watching the bodies swing from the tree, or are you helping people get out of town?

Gay is the new black, when laws are being passed that make homosexuals different in the eyes of the law.  It is no longer fashionable for those “lunatics, crazies and fringe people” who were shouting at the McPalin rallies to be in the mainstream.  But it is okay for liars to write laws and propositions that “protect traditional marriage”?

And what happens, once this law is passed, if they try to “protect real traditional marriage”?  Is someone in a few years going to tell my African-Chilean-Mexican-American children that they can’t marry because the person they love is white?  Gay is the new black . . . 

Same-sex marriage bans paradoxical in historic election

After Prop 8

California high court will hear appeal of gay marriage measure