Plus: Praise for Guv’s ex-aide Charles O’Byrne
N.Y. Assembly member would be the first openly gay U.S. Senator.
advertisement
advertisement
|
By PETER ROSENSTEIN
Friday, January 05, 2007
The story of the fallen evangelical ministers was a familiar one in 2006. First Ted Haggard, then Paul Barnes. Maybe there is something in the water in Colorado.
But more likely, it’s God saying to these guys, “You were born this way and no matter how much you try to pretend you aren’t, you are still gay.”
Many of us had a shock the first time we had a sexual reaction to a person of the same sex. For me it was embarrassing and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I told myself it was only a phase. If I dated enough women, told myself and everyone else I was heterosexual, then it would become true.
But this is where the similarity to these ministers ends. They not only chose to fight their own homosexuality, but also felt compelled to foster hate and stigmatize others who are gay or lesbian.
My parents taught me to love everyone and not to hate someone because of their skin color, their religion or their ethnic background. We didn’t discuss homosexuality, but I made the connection that I shouldn’t discriminate or hate someone for that either. So while I fought my own sexual orientation and pretended I could overcome it like an illness, I never disparaged anyone else’s.
Ministers who were trying to hide their homosexuality need to take responsibility for the hate they spewed and for the deaths of those such as Matthew Shepard who were the victims of the hate crimes their words incited.
We should declare Sexual Honesty Day in the world. Maybe we can ask the United Nations to do so. It would be like those days that police departments or the IRS declare where you can turn in your guns or pay your back taxes and there will be no penalties and you will be granted amnesty.
On Sexual Honesty Day everyone in the world would declare whether they are straight or gay or bi. We would allow all those priests and religious zealots and members of Congress to be honest for just one day. They would be given amnesty and couldn’t lose their jobs or be thrown out by their congregations or constituents. They would simply have the wonderful feeling of being honest with themselves and others for one day of their lives.
I believe if we could grant everyone this one day of amnesty, people would come to the same conclusion I did when I finally admitted to myself that I am gay. My life suddenly became better in so many ways and I could look in a mirror and, for the first time, the true person I was looked back at me.
We will continue to see more ministers and others outed as gay and lesbian as our community gets more frustrated with trying to explain that we are the same as everyone else. Some good, some bad, but all human beings made in the image of God.
We will also see more and more gay and lesbian people come out on their own as we teach equality in schools.
But we must get the younger generation of politicians to realize that to get votes they don’t need to quote scripture and tell people how pious they are. I would urge those such as Barack Obama, who likes to publicly talk about his piousness, not to fall into that trap. Let us remember how important it was to the founders of our nation to separate church and state.
Let us finally leave our sexuality in the bedroom and bring issues of war and peace, education, public safety, decent wages and affordable housing to political discourse.
Peter Rosenstein is a Washington, D.C. based gay rights activist and can be reached through this publication.
|
