Here is something for you I KNOW to be true– it’s not a mere belief. For 2000 years or more, gay people have been subject to a vicious, virulent, and consistent prejudice. We have been imprisoned, slandered, criminalized, degraded, pathologized, and murdered for being different. There are many people who deem it a good thing to make our lives as difficult and unpleasant as possible, often under the guise of “We love you” and “This is for your own good”. That this prejudice exists is beyond all doubt. That we are treated far differently, and not in a good way, than other people is also beyond all doubt. Advocacy AGAINST including gay people as gay people as full members of the human family is predicated on the noble notion that it is a GOOD and GODLY thing that society — much to its loss, as far as I can tell– refuses to cease this sanctioned oppression and the subsequent humiliation of the homosexual minority, that whatever is done to the lives and happiness of these “lesser” beings is a good thing.

Double points if you get to pretend you do it out of love, whether for G or for the oppressed minority.

This is what I call the Brown Incorporated Anti-Gay Religious Agenda (BIAGRA, but it doesn’t make me hard): Because you believe that you understand something written in a book that you believe is the Word of G about a subject you believe to be homosexuality, my civil rights before the law, and my human rights before the whole of humanity, should be compromised. All on the basis of YOUR beliefs, not facts, not reason, and certainly, not love.

Oh, you’ll SAY I have exactly the same human rights as everyone else, but only insofar as I am willing to not be exactly what I am, an out, proud, happy homosexual man. Only insofar as I am willing to agree with you that hetero=good and gay=bad, reality be damned. Only insofar as I am willing to make my life conform to your expectations or your Church’s without a thought for my own, let alone for Reality. And only insofar as I am willing to give up what you call THE GAY AGENDA.

I, and a lot of other people, have big problems with all of this, and this problem is what you call the Gay Agenda. You see, I don’t share the slightest bit of your belief. I don’t believe you understand what is in your book, I don’t believe it is G’s word, and most important of all, IT IS NOT MY BOOK. That’s called freedom of religion. And funny, neither of us has a problem with freedom of religion, at least in theory, though we mean very different things by it.

Here is your very own copy of the Gay Agenda for you: we want an end to this idiotic prejudice that says that because we are made the way we are, because we are adult human beings who prefer members of our own gender for love, sex, and romance, that there is something wrong with us, that we must be punished, stopped, prevented, and that whatever anti-Gay’s do to make that happen is justified. We want an end to the differential treatment accorded to us by our government because some people don’t like whatever they imagine our lives to be, or believe their god doesn’t like it. We certainly don’t want to be “loved” in such a way that our lives are made as difficult and unpleasant as possible, with political campaigns, prayer rallies, and smug assertions that we cannot possibly judge what is best for our lives and our relationship with G.

That is certainly not love as I’ve always understood it. It reminds me of the old joke “I love mankind. It’s people I hate.” It’s not a joke, because the same mechanism is at play here. Gay people are defined as very “other”, and thus very easy to “love” as an abstract group, like mankind. Their reality does not impinge. But this “love” means nothing, because as long as we are abstract, instead of real people who are damaged and hurt, you can go on loving us to misery and death. Let us claim our place in the human family, and somehow, your place is threatened.

Timothy wrote: “They would not see people as their enemy, but rather as poor souls who have been deceived by the enemy. The enemy is Satan, sin, and the forces of evil. They are fighting “the homosexual agenda” not homosexuals. Or so they say, and so they believe. But I also believe that it is quite easy to mistake the enemy for those who they believe are doing the enemy’s work. In fact, those speaking such words often have difficultly in distinguishing the gay person from “the agenda”…just as “hate the sin, love the sinner” generally means in practical terms “hate the sin and make the sinner’s life as miserable as possible so he’ll rue the day he ever considered doing what I call sin”, so too can “fight the sin” be translated as “fight the sinner”.”

We have VERY VERY different ideas of love. You idea of love is spreading the your conception of the gospel to the poor sinners out there– whether they are interested or not, without knowing whether they have already heard it and accepted it–-or rejected it. In short, with knowing nothing about their spiritual state or how G sees them– or anything about them at all. In short, it’s all about you, and not about the people you allegedly love. And that’s not love, it’s narcissism. And as Christopher (fabulous post, BTW) said, it is spiritual arrogance of an annoying degree. At the very least, it is flying in the face of what your Founder enjoined you to do: minding your own god-damned and god-damning business. Funny how the Founder went on and on about PDP’s (public displays of pietizing), but had nothing to say about homosexuality, or whatever they are talking about in the six places it is occultly mentioned in a vague general sort of a way in your book.

Funny how much energy you are expending towards stopping the gay agenda, and how little energy you are putting into doing the other things he commanded, whether it is feeding the poor or loving thy neighbor as thyself. Your insistence that this is your job to stop the Gay Agenda, that you are appointed by G to do so, borders on the same megalomania that has infected so many others concerning the Jewish Problem, The Witch Problem, the Heretic Problem, the Protestant Problem, the Catholic Problem, The woman Problem, and on and on and on.

You know. We don’t. End of story.

A host of other good Christians are all happy to tell me how much they love me, and then follow it up with comments like “cancer on society”, “unholy” (Hi, AC!), “broken person” “devil possessed”, a threat to family and children, faith and freedom, followed, if they have time and breath, by the rest of the whole vicious panoply of anti-gay, homophobic, lying rants. They will tell me how much they love me right before they tell me how much they hate my child-molesting, family threatening, disease spreading, country-destroying, religion-despising, marriage-compromising, military demoralizing ways.

Again, when you tell me how much you love gay people, but you don’t think they should be teachers lest… what… G alone knows what is flying through your brain about this– well, you know, it is very hard for me to feel the love. Because, if that’s love– this belief that I am so broken, so inhuman, so perverted, so sex obsessed, so G-knows-what that I CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO BE AROUND CHILDREN, I prefer hatred. At least it doesn’t assume that I’m so stupid that I can’t tell the difference .

Another form your spiritual arrogance takes, Dr.. Brown, is your certainty that not only do you know the difference between hating the sin and hating the sinner, fighting the sin and fighting the sinner, but that you also are qualified to determine the nature of my sin, Satan, and the forces of evil.

Who died and appointed you Elvis? I believe when Jesus talked about talked about the Pharisees and hypocrites, he was speaking to you, then and now.

As a Jew, I rejected the whole of Christian theology. As a Unitarian, I prayed To Whom It May Concern, confirming the jokes about Unitarians. As a Buddhist, I rejected the notion of the Christian God, or indeed, the requirement of ANY god. And finally, as an educated, moral, and thinking adult, I decided that the ultimate answers to ultimate questions ultimately don’t matter. Be kind, try not to hurt people, be honest, try to make things better. All the answers I need.

And herein lies one of the keys to the mystery. I can reject the whole of Christian belief, and this bothers just abut no one except the most rabid, or dim, fundamentalist. No political campaigns, no prayer rallies, no nothing. But let me say that I am gay, that I reject this itsy, bitsy, irrelevant piece of some Christian theology, let me claim that my life as a happy, healthy gay man is just as valid as any heterosexual’s, and good Christians will do everything they can, including telling the most vicious of lies, to make sure that validity is denied.

Let me proclaim that the myth of heterosexual superiority (or holiness, or G’s word, or normality) is simply that–a myth– that supports the reality of heterosexual privilege and subsequent bullying and devaluation of the gay minority, and I am called a threat to family, children, and morality.

Let me demand that this prejudice end, that I be treated equally as any heterosexual expects to be treated by his government, then that demand is treated as a threat to freedom of religion, speech, association, and anything else guaranteed by our constitution to ALL citizens. My demand for equal treatment means that you mount political and religious campaigns to make sure that doesn’t happen, that there is one set of laws and standards for heteros and faux-mo-sexuals like Alan Chambers and anyone else who is willing to go along with it, and quite another for gay people who do not agree with your agenda.

In short, it appears to me that this is not really about your religious beliefs at all. It’s just about what it has always been about– how much the very existence of gay people bothers some straight people, and some faux-mo-sexuals, or no-mo’-sexuals, or whatever.

Telling people of faith that we are deluded is just as vile as telling homosexuals that we are “really” heterosexual, or that we are “possessed of a demonic spirit”.

FriendOfJonathan, although I don’t share your faith, I respect your right to believe and practice your beliefs. I won’t debate whether your spirituality is “real”, simply because, not having seen the world through your eyes, I feel compelled to assume that you’ve had experiences that give you reason to believe what you do. And even if you haven’t, it would still be both futile and ethically wrong of me to attempt to force you to believe differently.

However I hope you’ll acknowledge that many people of faith–and in the US it’s primarily Christians–regularly seek to impose their beliefs on those of us who don’t share them. There are regular calls for public prayer and other public expressions of faith. Most politicians are expected to be religious. Those of us who don’t want to participate in public prayers, or who don’t go to a church, are regarded with suspicion and often treated with hostility. I’ve been told I was going to Hell so many times I’ve lost count.

Not all people of faith, and certainly not all Christians, behave this way, which is why I try to be very hard to be understanding in spite of the condescending tone that you and others sometimes adopt when responding to any criticism–or any perceived criticism–of your faith.

Dr. Brown. I watched a video of you asking people to attend this event. In explaining the horrors of LGBT activists, you pointed to the New Mexico photography business that was fined for actively discriminating against a couple based on sexual orientation in violation of state law. Of course you did not state it that way – you twisted it into some anti-gay, pro-Christianist propoganda phrases.

But the fact remains that you are asking people to come and surround a legal assembly of citizens partly because a public accomadation (business) chose to actively discriminate in violation of law. I can only assume that you and yours WANT to discriminate against LGBT people and their families.

Dr Brown, when you gather together over 1,000 people in red who wish to discriminate legally against me and who wish to change the law in New Mexico – Sir, I take that in and of itself as an act of violence. It is intimidating and it places me, were I there, in fear of immediate threat of physical harm.

People who wish businesses to discriminate against me do not love me in any way, shape, or form. To say differently is a lie in any religion.

Dr. Brown – you have a huge problem facing you on Saturday. One you have not thought through adequately. Pity

Above all, Dr. Brown seems to be surprised that he is not dealing with doormats.

So much has been said so well that I have little to add, except this: Dr. Brown’s counter-protest is going to create far more angry activist LGBTs than it will ex-gays and newly born-again Christians. I would stake my savings account and all my jewelry on that.

More important to me, this speech was given before the 2008 election. If Engle’s followers did, in fact, pray and fast — and lost — should we believe that his listeners will continue to stay the course of praying and fasting? That would, of course, be a Christian thing to do. But those camouflage pants on the kids on stage worry me.

I’m also concerned, as I’ve written at another blog, about the intent to “surround” the event in Charlotte. If Dr. Brown, in fact, intends to metaphorically surround the gay pride event with prayer, that is his right and privilege. And his statements here seem to reinforce that.

But the usual meaning of “surround” is to physically encircle something. Any attempt to corral a group of people your believers view as inimical, if not literally “the enemy,” strikes me as potentially creating a hostile situation that will nearly certainly lead to physical confrontations.

I don’t fully agree with Jim that simply bringing a lot of protesters to a gay rally needs to be a dangerous thing — and in any event, there’s no way I can think of to prevent it from happening. If Dr. Brown can get 1,000 of his followers there, that will reflect his popularity among his flock.

But he should also have some consequent responsibility for their actions. Again, if they are peaceful and nonthreatening, that is how our first amendment is supposed to work. But if they try to close in on the festival, or block people from freely entering and exiting, they will be violating both some fundamental rules of civil behavior, and what seems to be the intent that Dr. Brown is laying out here.

I can’t speak for anyone other than myself, but I am quite content to live in a world that contains people who disagree with what they mistakenly believe is my “lifestyle.” But I will also always stand up for myself, particularly in situations where I percieve a threat developing. My concern here is that the potential for provocation, particularly if there is anything like physical encirclement of festivalgoers, is high. And I don’t think that will lead to any good results for anyone.

Thanks for re-opening the prior thread.

Michael

You wrote: “I will say the comparison between Michael Brown and evangelical atheists is ridiculous. Where’s the violent (albeit “metaphorical”) rhetoric? Where’s the campaigning to deny basic freedoms? Where’s the mob of atheists crashing religious events?”

Nope.

Fundamentalists atheists routinely agitate for a world free of religion, usually specifying Christianity. That is a campaign to deny basic freedoms, including the freedom to decide for one’s self what one believes, and what one does not.

Priya cited a number of 1 billion atheists, the only way to achieve such a number is to factor in the forced atheism in communist China. There’s a prime example of campaigning to deny basic freedoms, and if you don’t believe that, talk to the Dali Lama a bit.

For people of faith, that evil dream of a world without religion requires forcing us to deny and reject our own experiences, including a vital relationship that enriches and sustains our lives, against our will, to our detriment, solely to appease the selfish beliefs of other people. You have no more right to castigate, threaten and wish away my faith, than Mr. Brown has to castigate, threaten and wish away my sexual orientation.

Your empty dismissal is no different from that from homophobes insisting that gays and lesbians are not persecuted. No doubt, it is unpleasant to be reminded that popular expressions of atheist sentiment are just as coercive and destructive as some expressions of Christianity, but doesn’t change the facts.

Telling people of faith that we are deluded is just as vile as telling homosexuals that we are “really” heterosexual, or that we are “possessed of a demonic spirit”. Really, in secular-speak, reference to mental illness, like the word delusional are the exact conceptual equivalent of demonic possession in fundie-speak. And the charge that people of faith are delusional is an extremely common occurrence.

I can only be sadly bemused by your last paragraph. It reminds me of Mr. Paulk. But I will say, people forfeit the right to complain about ex-gay ministries, at all, when they advocate trying to convince people of faith to become atheists.

Like sexual orientation, spirituality is not a mere mental construct, nor a mere decision. Like sexual orientation, it goes far,far deeper, and includes an experiential component that cannot be invalidated by trite argumentation.

Someone who can be talked out of their faith is like someone who can be talked out of their sexual orientation, among other things.

We are not the sworn enemies of morality, goodness and God’s blessing that these men preach we are. Many of us want only to bring good into the world, and we do this by living our lives proud of who we are and of the families we have built. I personally have devoted my life to working for abused children, have adopted some and worked for others.

I ask you Mr. Brown, am I and my family a source of all evil in this world? Have you had walked for even five minutes in my shoes? Have you experienced the hated glances, the threats to person and property?

One of my best friends is now in her 70′s. She told me that she could never tell her parents that she was a lesbian because her father would kill her. I absolutely believe her.

Do you wonder, after what so many of us have experienced and continue to experience on a regular basis, that we would find your decision to “take a stand” against us with your red shirt Joel’s army anything but violent? Will you do physical violence? No, so you say. But your protest attempts violence to our very being, and to our deepest soul.

There is no