The blog is
back, writing now from Bruno Saskatchewan on the great Canadian prairies. As
mentioned earlier, I am here, doing this.
I have
wanted to weigh in for some time on some of the explosive issues surrounding
religious freedom, civil rights, wedding cakes and pizza (!) that have been
generally blowing up social media over the past weeks, particularly in the USA
where most of my readers are. As usual I have an aversion to the pack mentality
where we all have to write about the same topic on the same week (I cannot stand that aspect of social media,
truly). Unfortunately this means I’m usually weighing in with whatever I have
to say after everyone else has grown bored with the subject and moved on to
something quite different. Nonetheless, here are a few of my thoughts.
First, it is
good to reflect that we live in a world where in some countries gay people are
thrown off of high buildings or jailed, and where in some of those same
countries or others Christians are hunted and gunned down on university
campuses or shopping malls. I don’t provide links for these claims; if you
don’t know that’s what is actually happening in the world in the year 2015, you
really should inform yourself.
While
questions of civil liberties and religious freedom are important in any
context, it is good to get some perspective. Nobody is killing anybody over
these matters in this country, barring the occasional random act of violence
that can happen anywhere for any reason. I’m not trying to minimize the facts
of the situation, but to situate them, perhaps.
Second, it
is odd, isn’t it, that the corporations that are fuming and threatening about
not doing business with Indiana or Arkansas don’t seem to have any problem
doing business with China, Saudi Arabia, and the whole host of other countries
where actual violence is being perpetuated, with the full force of the state,
on LGBTQ men and women? Is that not hypocritical? Isn’t it a problem that
corporations are using their vast wealth and power to subvert the political
processes in these states, and doing so with a great deal of duplicity and
cynical moral posturing? I realize I have readers of this blog who differ from
me quite a bit on LGBTQ issues—that’s fine, but don’t be taken in by these
corporations, and do be alarmed at the degree of political power they have
displayed in these events.
What I
really want to write about, though, is this whole question of ‘hate’, or ‘H8’
as the current spelling has it. Leaving aside what is actually a thorny
question, capable of more than one answer, I believe—can a Christian vendor
sell goods to a same-sex wedding service?—we can all agree that it is wrong to
hate people and right to love people. Certainly, from a Christian perspective,
this is beyond dispute, being the central commandment our Founder gave us,
right?
But it is
not hatred to say to someone, “I believe you are doing something wrong.” It is
not hatred to say, “I believe God has revealed to us that this particular
action is always wrong, so you really shouldn’t do that thing.” It is not
hatred to say “I don’t think I can help you to do that thing, since I believe
it is wrong.” It is not hatred to say, “I disagree with you.”
Hatred is
saying, well, “I hate you. You disgust me. I want you to die a painful death
and then burn in Hell for all eternity. I will do anything in my power to hurt
you.” That is hatred. Personally, I cannot think of any human being on this
earth who I hate, to be quite honest. Even people who I believe are doing
terribly evil things—people who hurt children, traffic drugs, perform
abortions, and so forth—I feel deeply sorry for these people more than anything,
since I do believe that whatever harm they do to others, they do incomparably
worse damage to themselves.
So I do say
to any LGBTQ person who may read this blog that I love you, I wish you well, I
want nothing for you but happiness and joy. And I firmly believe that to engage
in sex with a person of one’s own gender is always a deeply wrong thing to do,
that even though it may not feel like it, it is profoundly damaging to the
human person, and that the true way to happiness and joy is the difficult practice
of chastity and continence, the mastery of one’s sexual appetite so that it is
only expressed in a morally right way. And that the only right way to engage in
sexual intercourse is for a man and a woman to first wed each other (forging a
bond that cannot be broken by any subsequent legal decree) and then come
together in sexual union.
That is my
belief, and I express it with love and affection and a great desire for all men
and women to be happy and joyous in God who alone can make us happy. I would
also say the same thing, then, to anyone else who is engaged in sexual activity
outside of marriage. And I would say the same thing to those who are engaged in
any other kind of practice that is against the moral law—violence, theft,
lying, greed, and so forth.
But that’s
quite enough for one blog post, and pretty much what I have to say on the
matter. Let us love one another on this Mercy Sunday, and let us know that we
are all sinners, all fall short of moral perfection, but that God’s mercy
covers us all and calls us to rise from the tomb of our sins and offenses to
live with the Risen Christ in truth and in love.
Trying to defend oneself from charges of "hate" is pointless, because hate is a political construct. It has nothing to do with the alleged's hater's actual intentions. Any opposition to homosexual behaviour is hate. Refusal to accept it is hate. You may have no desire to see any harm come to that person, you're still a hater. To me, trying to tell LGBT we don't hate them is being supine. Rather than tell them we don't hate, tell them they're concept of hate is wrong, because their concept of love is wrong. That way we speak the truth AND we stand up for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteVery well reasoned and written Fr. And I hope you enjoyed your stay out here in Saskatchewan.
ReplyDeleteStill enjoying it! Thanks for the kind words.
Delete