What Love Looks Like

I'm a follower of the Believe Out Loud Facebook page, a pro LGBT Christian movement, and they shared this cute little picture today that I thought I would share with you guys. Nobody can deny that more people today are for equal rights for LGBT than we were 10 years ago. People try to explain away why this group of Americans can't share in equal rights for several reasons but the loudest of these is that God said so. God also said a lot of other things which either get ignored or explained away as irrelevant to today. But nothing can be more relevant today than equal rights. How can America continue to be a beacon of freedom and equality we want it to be if we withhold certain rights from our own citizens, our neighbors, family and friends? I don't believe in the "gay agenda" any more than I believe in ancient aliens visiting our planet. What I do believe in is Love. Love isn't something which can be explained it must be experienced. I can't understand how some find it so easy to prevent others to take part in this human experience.

Now some are comfortable with LGBT folk in being who they are as long as they're not visible. This and the "love the sinner and not the sin" doesn't cut it in my book. Nobody should have to hide their love, nobody should have to jump through extra hurdles to experience it and enjoy equal benefits of being in a long lasting and loving relationship. As I've said before divorce, abuse, extramarital affairs ARE the real threats to marriage not two loving people wanting to spend the rest of their lives dedicated to one another. It's that simple.

Get Out!

"To the Atheist watching this telecast if our belief in God offends you, Move!... We don't want you and we won't miss you." John Hagee

I've been silent here for well over a month for personal reason I won't go into too much detail. Let's just say that I had to part ways with an unnamed major cellular company. I worked at their call center for the last year and a half before the stress got to me and I snapped. I am going back to school in the fall to get my M.S. in Computer Science so I'll have a bit more free time to post. One video posted yesterday by Vorjack at Unreasonable Faith (love these guys) caught my attention this morning.



Hagee and the rest of his Super Best Friends are in their death throes clawing and gnashing at everyone and everything that doesn't fit their version of Christianity. What can you do when the latest surveys and reports in the last few years state that churches across America are hemorrhaging young people? Shut the door, plug your ears, and yell. They feel that their existence is in peril, and it is unless they change. And since change is seen as a threat, as polluting the holy, it is out of the question. To them it is much easier to tell your neighbor to move than to shake their hand. It is easier to ignore their existence and even threaten them than to coexist with them. Why? Because they, Hagee and friends, are so stuck on the idea of exclusivity that reality becomes a cosmic battle of dominance. It is either us or them, only one side CAN win. Like the dwarfs sitting in a pitch black stable in C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle some (not all) evangelicals would rather live in their version of reality than embrace the possibility that our neighbor may not be the boogie men some megaphone-mouthed pastors portray them as, but may even be *gasp!* human. What bothers me about this video is not Hagee and his comments, but the audience's overwhelming support. It's the everyday people and their support of these unloving comments in a "house of love". I'm sure at some point the congregation sang a hymn about how much God loves everyone. An ideal which unfortunately has been sacrificed for the temporary survival of the group.

As the shift continues towards more non-traditional forms of spirituality (or even None at all) the fundamentalist theists will get louder and more violent in their rhetoric. The non-theist, agnostic, atheist and non-traditional spiritualist must hold our ground not in fighting fire with fire but to extinguish hateful words with love and understanding. Our goal should be to lessen the suffering of others not add to it. And for those still in a religious group like this one who feel uncomfortable I urge you to leave, not to convert you to my side but to urge you to find your own path, your own cosmic song to sing. Get out and follow that which inspires you to be a better you.