16 June 2010, San Francisco. The lawyers made their closing
arguments in a trial over the legality of California’s ban of Gay
marriage in light of Proposition 8. Ironically, this was the very
day two years ago in 2008 when Gay marriage was legalized in
California before being subsequently repealed by a narrow vote in
the public referendum. The lawyer’s arguments made clear the vile
positions by the Christian Right to now insist that even the
existing marriages be annulled! Can we ever talk or be in
conversation with people who can’t accept your legal right even to
exist, and want to take all your basic rights away?
Blaspheming the name of Jesus
Christ in vain to justify their harmful actions.
We are often reminded that we are part of the body of Christ, shared
together with the likes of the Fundamentalist Christians in America,
Asia, and Africa. Yet, I often wondered, how one could be part of
the body of Christ without displaying God’s grace, love, and mercy,
and instead practices hate, discrimination and homophobia. Perhaps,
it is an impaired communion as the Anglicans would say. To claim
that Christ alone is basis of our communion without love, mutual
respect, acceptance, and common decency is contradictory.
It is difficult to be in conversation with people who so blatantly
misused God’s grace. For example during the Proposition 8 debate,
the Christian supporters to ban gay marriage promised that they
would not nullify the marriages already performed. After the victory
however, they went to court to urge the state to nullify even the
existing gay marriages. In order words, they are insisting to
destroy the marriages and relationships of 18,000, forced them by
decree to divorce and be separated, even though gay marriages had
nothing whatsoever to do with their straight marriages. The only
reason given is the will of the people, as if the narrow victory
gives them the right to take away the unalienable rights of gay
people.
The Christian Right in America, lied, cheat and steal, to obtain
victory in proposition 8 with misleading advertisements and false
testimony. Now in the display of heartless cruelty, they are even
after the existing gay marriages, asking the state not to recognize
it (in Perry v. Schwarzenegger). It is good that the true colors are
now being revealed in all the twists and turns of the truth. Yet God
is not mocked, and we have crossed beyond the line of injustice and
oppression. Not only were they not accepting gays as equal, they all
out to take away your basic rights, even your existing rights.
Hence, being in conversation with these multi faced gang robbers may
achieve little.
Another example is the Christian Right though Exodus (called
“Choices” in Singapore which is part of Church of Our
Saviour)playing a pivotal role in drumming up anti-gay sentiments in
Uganda to the extent that the new laws are being proposed that would
send gays to death. They have absolutely no conscience at all, to
lie blatantly, cause harm and then disown all responsibility. Dark
indeed is the body of Christ when we exchange darkness and call it
light and vice-versa. Everything is legal and approved by their
parliament they say, in the same way as Christians are persecuted in
many other countries legally. Does it make it right simply because
it was legal!
In Singapore last year, when the Christian Right took over the
secular organization “Aware”, it was said that their motive was
correct but the execution wrong. Ie, they did not see anything wrong
with taking over an organization on the sole basis that they
disagreed with their perceived pro-gay policies. For the Christian
Right, anything that is not explicitly anti-gay or neutral, must be
pro-gay and had to be challenged. What happens when the Government
legalized homosexuality in Singapore? Or any other policy the
Christian Right disagrees with? Would they try to take over a few
seats in Parliament? For the Christian Right there is nothing such
as morally correct as long as it is “legal” ie it is OK to swamp the
AGM of organizations with hundreds of new members to vote in a new
council thus in fact having a legalized coup de-tat.
Conversation with those who
are without conscience, nor reflection, justifying their harm in the
guise of religious freedom may be rather meaningless.
We are setting a spiritual and biblical precedence of judgment that
one day the freedom we have to worship God will be limited and
constrained by the narrow vote of the majority. What we sow is what
we reap four times over, and it may be all legal. We are so
insistent of our right to hate and to discriminate but have
forgotten that the majority argument is a two edged sword and a
narrow majority may likewise take away certain Christian rights that
we have. Laws also can be changed so that our Christian
organizations become illegal overnight in some form yet we would
have no right to complaint since it is legal. Taking a highly
legalistic approach is risky when the public opinion changes on the
gay marriage issue.
The Christian Right would often repeat that everything is morally
right on the basis that it is legal even cheating, lying, stealing,
jailing people because they were gay and executing people because
they have gay sex. They are so Law minded, influencing Governments
to create evil laws in some countries to suit their agenda and then
call it legal and moral. Their hypocrisy is so ingrained that they
perceived evil for good and tries to rationalize and justifies it by
the letter of the law and through the bible. But by the Spirit of
the Law, judgment is coming on the Christian Right for the injustice
and oppression they have committed.
Any conversations may be awkward without a sense of trust
worthiness, mutual respect and acceptance, and good reputation. Some
are calling for the right and freedom to disagree on the non
essentials and still be in a Christian communion, yet it makes no
sense because they are questioning your very right to exist and be
in relationship which is an essential non negotiable foundation.
(2 Sam 12:7 NKJV) Then
Nathan said to David, "You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of
Israel: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from
the hand of Saul.
(2 Sam 12:8 NKJV) 'I
gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your
keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had
been too little, I also would have given you much more!
(2 Sam 12:9 NKJV) 'Why
have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His
sight? You have killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword; you have
taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword
of the people of Ammon.
Yet, talk we must with all peoples, to be in conversation even with
those who has done much harm in the name of Christianity. Did God
not send prophet Nathan to speak to King David? We are the trumpet
bearer at the heavenly gates asking and pleading for the Christians
to reconsider their actions, pleading for them to remember God’s
grace and mercy, to remember righteousness and love, to ask them to
flee from causing harm and not to do evil deeds lest the name and
reputation of Christ be forever tarnished. We are not free to do
anything we like just because it is legal for surely the fear of God
must be in our hearts and minds. Yet, we take our freedom in Christ
for granted and use it as a license for sin against the outcasts and
the weak. We have blood on our hands which cries out to God for
justice. It is a cry that gets louder and louder each day.
It is not about “Gay Rights” but about oppression and injustice done
in God’s name and contrary to the fear of God and reverence for the
message of God’s love through the Gospel of our Savior and Lord,
Jesus Christ. We have sinned against the Lord. If we keep quiet,
even the rocks will cry out.