I attended a large rally last night with hundreds of LGBTQ, Drag performers, preachers, church folk, city leaders and allies.
What we heard is that the LGBTQ community is telling anyone who's listening that they're living in terror about these anti-trans, anti-drag laws being pushed by conservatives.
They told us that these laws WILL kill LGBTQ people, including children.
They told us that the pretenses of the anti-drag laws are fallacious, built upon lies not supported by reality.
In my own Kentucky, for instance, the conservative religious bigots are saying they have to protect children from sexually explicit performances like Drag Queen Story Hours (DQSH)... but that simply doesn't happen at DQSHs. It's a lie meant to attack and demonize, which attacks actually DO cause harm.
One Drag Queen pointed out the false claims that they're "sexualizing" and "grooming " children, but as she testified - and the crowd roared in approval - she was NEVER groomed by any LGBTQ people, NEVER harmed by any LGBTQ people.
She was, however, baptized as an infant, against her will. She was sent to weekly Bible classes and told what she should believe... she was told that if she continued this transgender path she was on, she'd be burnt alive for an eternity... this is what she was told by conservative zealots.
Let's talk about who's actually grooming!
She said she was never molested, never harmed, never groomed by LGBTQ people, no. Instead, the LGBTQ community were the ones who were there to embrace and support her in the face of the torment she received from conservative bigots. To pick her up when she'd been beaten down by conservatives.
Many of the speakers talked about how they were so oppressed, demonized and reviled by conservatives, including those who said they love them - their family and church family - that they felt it would be better to just kill themselves.
As children, this is what conservative mistreatment had led them to. According to them.
Do you all really think you know their situation better than them?
Fortunately, at least in large parts of the world and most of the US, the tide has turned against these fundamentalist bigoted ways of thinking. The majority of the US recognizes that of course, LGBTQ folks are their own best experts and that the actual experts agree with them, NOT with the minority view of anti-reason, anti-data bigots who are trying to force these laws on the majority of the states and nation. The old white religious conservatives may win temporary battles, but we will make progress and sooner or later, these hateful religious views will simply die off and be replaced with more progressive ideas.
It's really quite simple: Let's stand against those laws that cause harm and for those laws which promote wholesome, healthy lives. Let's stand against religious bigots - even if they don't realize they're bigots, and stand with the marginalized and oppressed.
And it should go without saying that any hateful comments made here will be deleted. Any comments that suggest that human rights should be denied to some people will be deleted.
Choose to side with freedom, justice and decency. Choose to side for children and families and healthy lives.
6 comments:
Fact 1: Marshal does not know ONE SINGLE PERSON who attended the town hall I mentioned (other than me).
Fact 2: NONETHELESS, Marshal made stupidly false and wholly unsupported ignorant attack claims about those who attended the meeting.
Probably Fact 3: Marshal probably made these oppressive attacks, these false charges from a place of ignorance because Marshal is not able to conceive of good Christian people and other good people who'd attend such a rally.
Fact 4: Marshal's inability to understand that good people of all sorts would take a stand alongside historically oppressed people against current attempts to oppress does not mean he's correct.
His abusive, malignantly egotistical false claims and attacks are Marshal's problem, not the problem of the good people at the rally and Marshal's stupidly false and unsupported attacks will not remain here.
Humble thyself, mortal. You ain't God enough to fight these good people taking a stand against your oppression. You've lost. You've lost. You've lost. Move on.
Marshal continues to make vicious, oppressive attacks on people he doesn't know. At all. He calls them names, calls them liars and much worse, all without even knowing them. What THEY tell me is that these sorts of attacks are harmful. That it's causing depression and anxiety and fear of just living. In some cases, it's leading to suicide in children and adults. That's what THEY are telling me. The actual experts agree.
But Marshal keeps insisting that he knows better than experts, knows better than the actual people. And he continues his cowardly, oppressive attacks against good people that he just simply doesn't even know.
Marshal is one of the impotent, dying dinosaurs, one whose children and grandchildren will rise up and call accursed and bigoted. He and his type of oppressors are dying out in the free world, thankfully. His arguments are hateful and hate-full, based on religious bigotry and biases and just plain ignorance and arrogance.
God, protect the oppressed from the oppressors. Open the oppressors eyes to the actual evil and harm and devastation they are causing. Lead them to repentance and, failing that, lead them to bury themselves under a rock and get out of the way of helpful, caring citizens and neighbors.
Marshal continues to attack those he doesn't know.
Marshal continues to speak false claims that he can't support.
Marshal continues to just admit that he literally doesn't know these people and that he has no basis on which to suggest anything about people he doesn't know.
Such comments won't remain.
Marshal asked a question:
And to whom do you pray? Not the God of Scripture, who does not provide any shred of a hint that you and He are on the same page. No, Dan. You pray to a God of your own invention...
The Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, makes abundantly clear that God is on the side of the oppressed and against the oppressors. From Isaiah 58, for instance...
For day after day they seek me out [God speaking]; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.
`Why have we fasted,' they say, `and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?'
"Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry and
to provide the poor wanderer with shelter--
when you see the naked, to clothe him, and
not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Or Isaiah 1, with God speaking out to religious nations who do NOT take up the cause of the oppressed or who actually do the oppressing:
Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
[he goes on to describe their religious festivals and practices, their "prayers" and "services"...]
...even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
DEFEND THE OPPRESSED.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
On page after page in the Bible, in the teachings of Jesus, we see a God who wants us to side with, stand up for the oppressed and marginalized. THAT is the God to whom I pray. Those who don't do that, even the religious zealots who pray and fast and "sacrifice," but who oppress? Their hands are full of blood, the God of the Bible says.
Come on, you should know this.
Marshal:
Do you acknowledge the reality that LGBTQ folks - huge numbers of them - actively fear the actions of the modern GOP and their conservative Democrat allies?
Do you acknowledge the reality that THEY will tell you that your oppressive laws and harsh words are making many of them want to give up and just go into hiding or even kill themselves?
Do you acknowledge the reality that the APA and the AMA are warning against such actions and attitudes from conservatives, that indeed, you are putting people's lives at risk?
I'm not asking if you believe they're correct, just if you acknowledge that this is the reality that the experts and the oppressed people themselves are saying. Answer those questions if you want to comment.
Now, I GET that you, in your pharisaical arrogance and hubris think that you are smarter than all these actual experts and the people themselves, but
what if you, in your ignorance and bigotry, are actually wrong and people ARE harming themselves because of you?
What if they're fleeing the church to rest with their trusted allies (which are NOT conservatives) because of you and those like you?
Will you feel any remorse to find out that you (and people like you) are actively causing harm?
Answer directly or move on.
Deuteronomy:
But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor.
Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and
the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression.
Judges:
I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you
from the hand of all your oppressors;
I drove them out before you and gave you their land.
2 Samuel:
And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that
they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed.
Wicked people will not oppress them anymore...
1 Chronicles:
[God speaking] they [Israel] wandered from nation to nation,
from one kingdom to another.
God allowed no one to oppress them;
for their sake he rebuked kings:
“Do not touch my anointed ones;
do my prophets no harm.”
Nehemiah:
when they were oppressed they cried out to you.
From heaven you heard them, and
in your great compassion you gave them deliverers,
who rescued them from the hand of their enemies.
Job:
For he has oppressed the poor and left them destitute;
he has seized houses he did not build.
“Surely he will have no respite from his craving;
he cannot save himself by his treasure.
Psalms:
The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
Psalms:
You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that mere earthly mortals
will never again strike terror.
More Psalms:
May God defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy;
may God crush the oppressor.
More Psalms, this time speaking directly to the GOP leaders in KY, TN, TX, etc...
From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
their evil imaginations have no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
with arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.
[Wow, does that sound spot on!]
I could go on and on in Psalms and really, every book, but continuing...
Proverbs:
Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,
but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
The writer of Ecclesiastes, speaking directly to the oppressed LGBTQ people of our land, acknowledging their oppression and the lack of hope because of those in power and their evil plans...
I saw the tears of the oppressed—
and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
and they have no comforter.
More from Isaiah...
Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says:
“Because you (Kentucky, YOU, Tennessee, YOU, GOP...) have rejected this message,
relied on oppression
and depended on deceit,
this sin will become for you
like a high wall, cracked and bulging,
that collapses suddenly, in an instant.
Jeremiah...
If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly,
if you do not oppress the foreigner,
the fatherless or the widow and
do not shed innocent blood in this place,
and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm,
then I will let you live in this place...
etc, etc.
"what if you, in your ignorance and bigotry, are actually wrong and people ARE harming themselves because of you?"
That would, as John Wayne would say, be the day. But to humor you in your desperate hope this hypothetical makes a difference, ANYTIME it can be shown I've caused harm unintentionally, I would alter my behavior to ensure no repeat. But of course, that's a tall order given first of all I'm neither ignorant on the subject nor bigoted, assuming by "bigoted" you mean something irrational about my opposition to that which God says is an abomination to Him. But my opposition doesn't rise (or sink) to the level of "bigotry". Your hatred of those dedicated to revere and obey God to the best of their abilities is actual bigotry. Given why you are is even worse.
"What if they're fleeing the church to rest with their trusted allies (which are NOT conservatives) because of you and those like you?"
That would simply be more evidence of mental/emotional disorder. Nothing I do justifies such a response. The reality is they flee the church because the church won't ignore God to appease their disordered compulsions for which they won't take up their cross to overcome or cope. More's the pity.
"Will you feel any remorse to find out that you (and people like you) are actively causing harm?"
If this "harm" is the result of my living by God's Will and defending it, and by my desire to protect children and adolescents from being lured into believing their disorder is normal, I would only feel badly that they insist on rejecting God for their personal gratification. That makes me quite sad already. Because unlike you, eternity matters to me and I would that none should perish. You're quite content with allowing them to perish. Hey, why not just push them in front of a train and get it over with?
I feel far more remorse for the fact these people are enabled by liars like you and might guarantee their loss of salvation as a result. I'm far more a friend to them in my rejection of their agenda than you'll ever be by enabling and appeasing them.
Here's where you delete for lack of an honest Christian response. But then, you're not really a Christian, so...
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