"WHAT KIND OF GAY AM I?"
"Those who waste their time stalking, scolding or disapproving whoever are actually doing it to themselves".
It saddens me when people use the Bible to find grounds for their sins and prejudice. I've read and heard a lot of things for and against homosexuals (What kind of things have you ever heard about Bible against LGBTQIA+ people).
When we are overly concerned about something that denotes a neurotic behaviour. Either we are trying to disguise something, or our subconsciousness is pushing us to out something that is ingrained into us. "What bothers me too much on others is actually a part of me". This is a classical psychoanalytical statement. Be careful! Those who waste their time stalking, scolding or disapproving whoever are actually doing it to themselves. There is something deep inside that has not been dealt with yet and that bothers us. (Have you ever heard or known somebody who used to persecute homossexuals and then you got to know that this person was actually homossexual?)
I can say that, to a certain extent, all of us have got a gay within us with whom we relate. We can out him and make peace with it, or we can reject him. Being gay is something that is within us and not something we can simply do away with. Many people over the course of History have chosen a minority group to be destroyed: Jews, indigenous peoples, Africans, women, and nowadays, gays. (Do you think the US is a safe place for LGBTQIA+? What can we do to make it safer?)
Not very long ago we had been discussing whether women should or shouldn't be pastors and bishops. Many people were for it, but many weren't. In both cases, people used the Bible to support their points of view. After a couple of decades, we can all laugh at that debate, which was nothing but a reflection of that historical moment when men were losing their hegemony on power to women (both in and out of Church). It was a case of prejudice and sin seeking to be justified by the Bible. (Has anyone ever used the Bible to condemn you for being who you are?)
Those who keep trying to find verses here and there to justify their prejudices find it hard to understand what Jesus taught so many times during his ministry: love your neighbour as yourself. That pretty much sums up all of the Law. To me this is the central matter: people are not ready to love the gays because they threaten their masculinity and their femininity. And if what's under threat is being male or female it is exactly because these categories were never set in stone. When a gay person comes out, that is disturbing both to society and to individuals. Why are they disturbed about it? If we know so well what male and female mean (as defined by our culture), there is nothing to worry about! (
Working our inner gay is a far more positive effort than trying to repress the gay outside of us. Doing the latter won't solve our sexual neurosis. When I am able to let go of my prejudice and hug a gay person as a human being then I will have discovered what true love is, the one that Jesus spoke so much about. And let's not forget that every homosexual person has a mother and a father. If he or she were your child, would your posture be the same? Think about it.
Text by Reverend Marvel Souza
