Sunday, December 27, 2009

This is why we have to fight

"'Loving! Lusting, you mean. Read your Bible... Read Leviticus, read Romans 1:26.' I don't know what I said then. Maybe I didn't say anything. I'm not sure I was able to think any more. I do remember, though, that I went home and read Leviticus and Romans, and cried again."
~ Garden, Nancy. Annie on My Mind. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982. (Place of publication unknown)
It touches something deep inside me and makes me feel like crying to think of kids being read Leviticus and Romans and told that they are abominations. Why must What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality be so little known that my local library system doesn't have it?
This is why I have to do this. This is what to keep in mind. This is why apathy won't cut it. This is why we have to fight.
Because apathy won't cut it. "I don't care what you do in your own time." "Why can't gay people do what they want and leave us alone?"
Because we aren't a disease, to be hidden away and forgotten about. In recent memory, I heard a conversation in which a girl had never heard of gay girls. She seemed to think it only applied to men. I had never even heard of the concept of transgender until a few years ago. How can we expect our teens to feel good about themselves, when as far as they know, nobody else is like them? When a girl likes other girls and assumes it's just friendship love and that it will always be better than romantic love? What will happen when she's engaged, or even married, and realizes the truth? When a boy who is biologically a girl, or vice versa, assumes that something is wrong with them--or flat out assumes they are gay, when that isn't necessarily true? How can we expect teens to grow up well-adjusted when they are seriously confused? When there is no obvious support, or anyone they know they can turn to with questions? When everywhere same-sex couples are still denied marriage, not to mention marriage within their faith? That isn't going to work. We have to fight if we want any of that. No, apathy won't cut it. If you're not against us, please, join us.

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