I stumbled upon this blog entry by a girl who's blog is lizspeaks.com. To be fair, I put a link to her blog, because I am copy and pasting the post I read. The only post I read. I'm a busy man. But here it is:
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10.15.2001
Thanks, Gov. Davis, for recognizing that gay people are really no different than other folks. In fact, dare I be somewhat inflammatory and suggest that giving straight people different rights than everybody else is tatamount to special rights for straight people. I would think that any law that gives greater priveledges or accessibility to one group, singling out other groups who cannot receive those services is in fact special rights. But the allegedly good christian people who stand in opposition to compassion and to seeing people for who they are rather than who they love don't see it that way.
I had meant to do a long piece on this but for now, here's the short version. All these right wing Christians who stand up and say that Jesus wouldn't like gays or blacks, or any other group you can think of are full of shit. The whole premise of Christianity means relegating the Old Testament to a bunch of interesting stories making the New Testament, which focuses on the life and times of our savior, Jesus Christ, the defining book of the Bible. Which means that the one passage talking about the atrocities at Saddam and Gomorrah that says "God hates that" referring to men lying with other men as they lie with women is now part of that collection. And for what's it's worth, translations from the original acutally mean that God hates being inhospitable to your visitors, not the gay issue.
And yet, right-wingers, preachers of hate, stand there and say that anyone not like them don't deserve the same rights, the same compassion that Jesus preached. How the hell does that work?? Jesus hung out with lepers, prostitutes and preached that everyone is no better than the lowest among them, that in God's eyes, we all deserve love. So where do they get off hating? NOTHING in Jesus' stories speak of hate being okay, rather he reached out to everyone and preached kindness and compassion, the two values that I hold more and more dear with each passing day.
So I have two messages: 1. BE NICE! Jesus most certainly was and if you're going to hold him up as the messiah you may as well get his message right and 2. get off your high horse. No one person is better or worse than any other. We are all just different and if even if you don't 'accept my alternative lifestyle' it still exists. Just like me not accepting your hatred, your anger (though you don't know me, I'm really very nice and quite harmless, unless telling bad jokes is a crime) doesn't make it go away. But that doesn't stop me from hoping.
For what it's worth, I remain undecided on the religious issue but am clear that hatred is not something that Jesus preached. So if you're going to use religion as a platform for hate, you've just got it all wrong.
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I really liked seeing that post because it is exactly what I am always telling people. Progressives, atheists, the people I generally hang out with, always bash on Christianity. I agree that what religious people do in the name of that religion (and just about any religion) is wac. But I do have to say that everything I know about Jesus seems to be good. He was a pacisfit anti-capitalist and hoped for the well being of everyone. It's just that Christians now days just ignore everything in the Bible* and make up their own "interpretations" of it. Of course everbody will come to their different conclusions about what the Bible means. Afterall, it has blatent contradictions** so nobody can take it word for word and believe BOTH. They have to come up with one interpretation. But how can these right-wing Christian "fundamentalists" turn things around so drastically? I have come to the conclusion that "fundamentalist" (of any religion) means taking the "fundamentals" and completely doing the opposite.
Take for example Bush Jr. One of Newsweek's top selling issues (aside from 9/11) featured a cover story on "Bush and God." It said that one of the two books that Bush recently studied was Acts. Now think about Bush's tax breaks for the rich and the whole laissez faire*** Republican wet-dream. Compare that from the passage from Acts which I will present for you (Acts 4:32-35).
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
Indeed, the communist mantra "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is dirived from the same passage that Bush read.
*If they really read the Bible they would realize that God enjoys rape and plunder from time to time.
**Read the Disinformation Book of Lists for some of those contradicitons.
***Or "lazy unfair" as I see it.
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