Elim Sanctuary - Gays and Christianity - the fundamentalist are fearful

On Apr 03, 2008, hundreds of agents raided the YFZ Ranch in Texas where Polygamy was being practiced in the name of a Christian sect - Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, (FLDS). A total of 416 children were removed, many of the girls pregnant and forced to marry much older guys. We are all Heavenly Father's children," says an FLDS mother of two boys, ages 11 and 14, who identified herself only as Brenda. "You have your religion. I have mine. You choose to live how you want. I choose how I live mine. Is this not freedom? Can't we choose?" Their sins were uncovered, the facts known and now there was freedom for the children and possible legal actions against the adult members.

Very few mainstream Christian churches mentioned the Hedonistic mass heterosexual orgies that happened in the ranch. This is another biblical example of how religion can cause people to do very unnatural actions. The sexual abuse at the ranch does not make heterosexuality a sin, just as the mere mention of men having sex with men in the bible does not make it a sin. They had a choice just as “ex-gays” have a choice to take on the unnatural and be like straight men in the name of wrong religious teachings. It is a right to be ex-gay, to have polygamous marriages, to be involved in mass sexual orgies, but ultimately there is no freedom but bondage just as the members of the church are not allowed to escape from the compound. There is no human rights to be exgay just a bondage and a denial of freedom to be who you are born as and there is no freedom in living a lie.

The phase 'It is human rights to be an exgay” are very common statements used by ex-gay groups. Their notion of human rights is that they have every right to be ex-gays, as if the Gay community is having all the special human rights. When the real truth is that gays in many cases are forced to hide their identity and given little human rights to be who they are naturally, and liable for criminal charges under the law, and are strongly condemned by the Christian Church, they have taken all the human rights away. The false witness that gays are having all the rights are repeated over and over again and we see this in the Church in Queenstown that says that gays are given very much all the rights like everyone else! when one can hardly write anything gay positive in the news, positive gay theme movies are banned, gay affirmative groups are banned, gay churches are not allowed in KL, gays are kicked out of the churches, the Penal Code still calls for jail terms, and gays are not allowed to marry.

It is a sin to give a false witness, because by our witness people could be condemned and wrongly accused and charged for a crime that they did not commit. Raising a false witness was so serious that it bears the death penalty to be put away for it was considered a great evil. The result is that the false witness that we have committed, we will be judged likewise ie “life shall be for a life”, and “a tooth for a tooth”. There is neither pity nor grace when we give a false witness especially if it impacts not an individual but a whole people group. And because the Church gives this witness to the World, then the same manner of judgment will come. Just as we claim that Gays have Human rights (to the extent that they deny these rights to ex-gays) when they do not, so too our rights to be treated with dignity and respect will be taken away.

It is human rights to worship God, to worship Christ, rather than to be ex-gay. The false witness impacts the whole church for we have now less rights to insist that our real needs for human rights be respected in countries in India, China, Africa, and the Middle East where the large population resides and yet the rights are not given for Christian worship and churches. The churches proclaimed that Gays are being used to destroy the church and ironically this may be true for the church is so caught up on condemning gays that we forgot that our false witness stops the move of God to a world that is so hungry for the gospel. We seek open heavens, yet the heavens will not be opened even if we pray for our prayers are tainted with false witness and self-righteousness against a small minority group. We loose our vision without wisdom. It takes so little leaven to taint us.

The Christian Church is falling into sin against gays because they are not going out to preach the gospel. There are billions in India, and China that still have not heard of the Gospel. There are many in the institutionalized churches that have grown cold and weary with the saints and Mary replacing the centrality of Christ. We are called to go out to proclaim the good news of Christ, yet we stay at home fighting non-core issues, which distract us. It came as no surprise that the Anglican Communion is on the verge of a split not because the churches now no longer believe that Jesus actually died and rose again physically, but on the issue of the ordination of a Gay Bishop.

Coming against a weak minority group such as gays is so tempting to exalt our morality and righteousness and our conservative credentials that the modern-day Bathsheba seduces us. Bathsheba was someone that David had no right to touch or even laid eyes on for she was married, but yet He had wicked plan to get rid of her husband so that he could marry her. The church has no right to neither condemn the gay community nor support the penal codes against gays. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, when the Church went all out against gays, and started using use false witness and rhetoric to achieve its purpose, the result was that many lives has been totally destroyed and messed up for the last 30 years. It opens up a whole Pandora box of judgment. The opposite begin to appear with gays gaining human rights and the church being subjected to billions of dollars of claims for sexual abuse by priests, sexual infidelity by high profile church leaders, and corruption and greed in the televangelist space.

The more misinformation that has been churned out by the Christian church and called factual, it seems that the real truth that gays are a given, begin to spread and have a life of its own through the Internet and beyond. The Religious activists fear the factual information and so have been busily reinventing science and reports to justify their claims. But the more they do, the more the issues were analyzed and the truth found. The religious activities inadvertently created the interest and encourage strong response from gay groups to reply to the false witness by the church. In the ensuing dialog, the truth becomes known especially to the teens. What was previously unsaid with a “Live and let live attitude” became open debate with free advertisement.

The Fundamentalist activist are becoming more and more fearful with society seemingly vary of the anti-gay stance of the church and teens are having so much resources and are coming out so much earlier. The Gay community which hitherto has been so closeted is becoming increasingly visible from strength to strength not that the numbers increased but that more and more are coming out from the closets to their families and friends. As a result, the acceptances of gays are increasingly rapidly just over one decade, with gay marriage common in the next decade in the US and Europe. Even in Singapore, which in some way is conservative, is seeing teens accepting their sexuality at a very early age. Gay couples becoming much more visible and obvious.

When the factual truth is established just as the reality of what was happening in the FLDS branch was uncovered, there will be freedom for those under bondage of religion. Just as the "parents" of this stolen generation of children tried to get the custody their kids back, the chances are not high. When the factual truth that gays are a given just like you and me, each with their God ordained sexual orientation, there will be human rights to have the freedom to be how God created us as. We will not live a lie, always in hiding, due to false religious indoctrination. The fundamentalist activist have opened a pandora box when they kept highlighting homosexuality but once the issue is opened and debated, and the truth known, they could not close the box and put back gays into prison. They are getting more desperate each day in trying to stop a Tsunami which they themselves have created.