This is not the reply I would have written, from Dan Savage, but that is what is great about the diversity of activists that we have. !
And here is the message that I have, shorthand, for Christians like Dan's reader (the religious right is not monolith):
We find, over and over, in practice, that the perceived absence of a malice against gays "in your heart" is not enough. Absence of malice is not the same as the presence of love. And where love does not exist, where love is not asserted, hate of many kinds flourishes.
So what is it going to take, i.e. "what can I do?"?
Concerned Christian parents have to finally come to be able to say these words in the same sentence, "love", "gay kids": As in "God loves gay kids" or "We all must love our gay kids, not bully them, because when tragedy strikes, victim and abuser, they are all our sons". And daughters. Say them in their heart, in their local school, in their voting booth.
Until that time, blaming "Satan" or "someone else" for the extraordinary social stress put on gay kids, made in God's image and called the same as everyone else, is spiritual violence, spiritual negligence, a parental abdication, a willful crime.
Today's Christians, who seek a just society for all, cannot leave these things undone, even as they pray for forgiveness for "things left undone".
Saturday, October 2, 2010
The absence of malice does not equal the presence of love
