Why anti-gay bullying is a theological issue

[zeborah]

"Anti-gay bullying is a theological issue because it has a theological base. I find it difficult to believe that even those among us with a vibrant imagination can muster the creative energy to picture a reality in which anti-gay violence and bullying exist without the anti-gay religious messages that support them."

Read more at Sexuality/Gender: Religion Dispatches

Comments

[flourish]

I agree with this - my believe that people are shitty knows no bounds - but I do think that in the US, right now, religious justifications are a huge part of the greater movement to prevent equal rights.

IMHO, it's not so much that individual people who are doing the abuses are necessarily thinking about the Bible when they torment a kid, but that the signal that this is OK is given by (say) the national debate about gay rights, which is often framed in Biblical terms.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yeah, there's a big cultural difference between the US and the UK (where I'm based), particularly on the place of religion.

[flourish]

Indeed!

[zeborah]

Certainly there's some difference, and it's different again in New Zealand, but none of us have any laurels to rest on. It was a UK magazine that we wanted to use to teach our youth group until I noticed its homophobic messages and had to talk to my minister about how if I was going to use that magazine I'd be challenging those messages so hard. And the broader church I belong to in NZ (though thankfully not my own congregation) still refuses to ordain ministers in a gay relationship.

The message I get out of the article is that as long as the church says homosexuality is a sin, and refuses to ordain gay ministers - even if it speaks against physical violence - it's still sending a strong message that there's a group of people that aren't as good or deserving as other groups. And ultimately such a message is supportive of the attitudes that let people think they can get away with violence. (And which let people actually get away with violence, too.) If we actually want to end the violence, we need to do a heck of a lot more speaking out - not just about the violence, but about the attitudes that support the violence.

[tree_and_leaf]

There's certainly homophobia in the UK, and there is certainly homophobia in the British church, but I genuinely don't think that religion is the primary motor of British homophobia (any more).