Live Breathe and Die

Archive for December, 2009

I learned a startling lesson when I wrote about the good things Christians do and the reasons for traditional marriage. I received hundreds of hate-filled emails from gays decrying their hatred of Christians and their wishes for the sudden death of Christians. They also engaged in personal attacks on me although none of them had ever met me or knew of my friendships with gay people.

This is a group, who for years, have accused other groups of intolerance and phobic behavior. This same group may be the most intolerant subgroup of Americans anywhere in the country. I have visited forums today, after the approval of gay marriage by the D.C. City Council and found tempered messages from those who oppose gay marriage, but hate-filled messages by gays against Christians. This could be found in any number of forums or comment sections on hundreds of website and forums in the days leading up to the vote on prop. 8 in California.

This visceral hatred that gay people harbor against Christian people comes out of ignorance. How many Sundays have I sat in church and listened to a Pastor instruct Christians that they are to love gay people as God does? Time and time again. How many times have I heard Christian people point out that we are to hate the sin, but not the sinner? This applies to straight people who commit any number of sins as well. There is love and compassion from Christian and conservative people towards gay people, but only hate, loathing and ill will in return.

All Christian people want is to preserve the sanctity of marriage. Marriage, as an institution, has been around for 5000 years. It has survived and strengthened cultures because it creates a very important unit, the nuclear family, with benefits to the children, the society and the culture. Whenever we have strayed from the nuclear family, we have learned the consequences. Any number of sociological studies have proven this to be true. One father, one mother and the offspring of that union. When we stray, we pay.

This is the logical response from Christian people. We are not saying that our culture should make gay people uncomfortable or that they should lose any civil rights. We are not saying that they should be treated like second-class citizens. We are not condemning them in any way. We are simply saying that the institution of marriage is sacred. We believe that a man and wife become one in marriage. We recognize the reality of a family unit with the contributions of a father and a mother. It’s that simple.

Gay people have turned this simple logic on its ear. They have ignored the reality of the sanctity of marriage and framed the debate as one originating from hatred. That is simply wrong. Christians would not sacrifice and go to such great lengths to contribute food and clothing to poor people every day of the year if they were hate-filled.

They would not contribute millions to feed poor children in third-world countries if they were haters. They would not build irrigation systems in poor countries to help farmers’ feed hungry people or build hospitals to treat sick people if they were consumed with hate. Do gay people spend much of their lives doing these things?

There is hate in this debate, but it does not begin with the Christians. The media can side against Christian people as they often do, and they can feed the negative conclusions in this debate, but Christian people will continue to love and pray for other humans. They are on the receiving end of a hate-fest, negative publicity, media campaigns to discredit them, gay organizations that mischaracterize them and gay supporters who buy into the whole myth.

The truth is that the hate is a one-way street. The gay community may be recruiting millions of young people coming to the age of majority, they may be winning over more liberal people and more city dwellers, but their base message is flawed and misguided.

This is not about equality. This is how the gay PR campaign characterizes the debate, but that is based on a false pretense. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was about equality. Allowing woman to vote was about equality. Giving woman equal rights in the Middle East is about equality. Giving handicapped people the benefit of access to public transportation and public buildings is about equality.

Allowing people who choose to have sex with members of their own sex and then demand that this gives them a right to a sacred institution is not about equality. There are some things that people really do have a right to. Black people do have a right to be equal citizens of this country. That is an undisputable right. Allowing two people of the same sex, who cannot propagate and establish a nuclear family, to be bound in Holy matrimony is not a right. In doing so, we destroy the concept of marriage.

People who call themselves ‘progressives’ believe that any kind of progress, any change in our society, is good. They don’t care if that change degrades, diminishes or tears apart our culture. If there is change, they only see it as fulfilling their goals. Progressives see gay marriage as fitting neatly into this utopia. They ignore the importance of traditional marriage and the gains our culture made when traditional marriage was at its strongest. They ignore the baby-boom generation and the wealth and societal improvements that generations’ parents brought to our country. It is too convenient to ignore these truths.

What we are left with is a culture that is pitted against itself. We have a segment of the population that expects that any change will somehow benefit us. We are to ignore the benefits derived from traditional marriage in order to give way to progress. In the process, we see enormous hate. Those who are progressives and those who are gay can continue to be consumed with hate, but in the end, it will be their downfall. Christians will always love all of God’s children, no matter what a newspaper prints, a newscast claims or a gay parade sign proclaims.

It’s not about Christian intolerance. It’s about the intolerance coming out of the gay community. It’s time to admit that.