Subscribe to Breaking NewsDaigle: Can’t Fight Faith
About a two weeks ago, I attended a meeting of our local PFLAG chapter for a special presentation by their national executive director, Jody Huckaby (who’s from south Louisiana, incidentally. A small town north of here called Eunice).
The presentation focused on creating positive interactions with faith communities on LGBT issues. It’s an issue with traction here: faith communities are everywhere.
At the beginning of the meeting, Huckaby had everyone introduce themselves and offer two bits of information — which religion they were raised in and which religion (if any) they currently practice. The overwhelming majority of the people assembled – there were around 60 or so, mostly college age, about a fifth 30 and up, mostly from here in Lafayette, some from New Orleans — were raised Catholic. But the group represented the full spectrum of faiths from Catholic to Hindu.
And the overwhelming majority of those assembled said they no longer practice any faith.
I was also raised Catholic, but on the second question, I found myself in the minority. While I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, my partner and I are practicing Christians, attending a local non-denominational church. And as person after person around the room shared their trip from practicing faith to rejecting it, I was struck by a familiar feeling.
It’s the same feeling I get sometimes when I sit in Sunday services and the sermon winds its way to gay issues. It’s the feeling of being a stranger among the flock, an outsider.
Being one of “the gay faithful” isn’t easy. In many ways, you belong fully to no community. Either the church withholds its full acceptance because you’re gay, or the gay community gives you grief because you still go to church. But for us, faith still matters, and it matters enough for us to find a place for it in our lives. We’re nurtured by our faith. We take comfort in it.
And while the relationship is not perfect, it’s one worth working on.
Religion has wounded many of us in the gay community. With one hand sporting an accusing finger and the other holding the Bible, religion has positioned itself as our enemy. We’ve seen religion used as an excuse to deny our relationships and families recognition, to deny us an equal place at the table.
Many of us have fought back, with a similar accusing finger on one hand and our personal truth in the other. And while I understand the anger, it’s difficult for me to see much difference in the postures.
Somewhere between the accusing finger of religion and the accusing finger of the gay community are people like me — gay men and women who believe in God, who still go to church, who have forged friendships with open-minded people of faith (They’re out there, trust me. You just have to dig a little), who have brought the issue up with their pastors (sometimes it’s positive, sometimes not) and who are working to carve a neutral space where being gay and being faithful can peacefully coexist.
I look at it this way: There are six verses in the Bible that religion has used to condemn us. Six verses amid thousands of other verses. One teaching amid hundreds of other teachings. And we have spent our time focused on those six verses, directing our anger at them and forgetting everything else.
Much like religion has.
And in throwing our community’s anger so squarely at religion, we’re leaving some of own behind. And I like to think, as a community, we won’t settle for acceptable losses. I like to think we’re fighting for an equal place for all of us.
You can be angry at the things people do in the name of religion (Pat Buchanan, James Dobson: I’m talking to you). But we should lighten up a little on religion itself. Some of us don’t hate it. In fact, we value it and practice it.
And there are people of faith with open minds, people who don’t think the entire value of a person rests on whether or not they pass the test of those six verses. And those people shouldn’t be discounted. They’re more like us than them.
We’ve gotten to know those people. We see them every Sunday. And they know us, know our partners, know our lives, and it’s made a difference. It hasn’t overcome all the barriers, but it’s broken down some of them, and that’s a start.
The gay community needs to have a little faith in the faithful, both gay and straight.
Cody Daigle is an entertainment writer for the Times of Acadiana in Lafayette, Louisiana, and he is a blogger on gay issues at theadvertiser.com.
“What the bible says – and doesn’t say about homosexuality” by Rev. Dr. Mel White, can be found on the “soulforce” web site. It explains how those 6 verses have been mistranslated, and is very reassuring to anyone wanting to remain in a judgemental church. It is also a great resource to anyone who is working for equal rights.
It’s time to call them out. It’s time to expose those who claim that salvation is dependent upon political beliefs. Those who who now say that only pro-life, anti-gay Christians go to Heaven must be exposed not only for their hypocrisy but for their heresy.
I agree that faith is important to gay people, but I can’t believe you go to a church that condemns gays. I go to Metropolitan Community Church in Denver, which is a church for GLBT people. I won’t attend a church that “tolerates” my existence, and says they are “affirming”, but they draw the line at acceptance. We have a responsibility as gay people to demand respect. This whole thing about trying to win people over by licking their boots is tired and over.
“But we should lighten up a little on religion itself.” —
Uh…no!!!! You can believe what you want, I respect that. But who are you to tell us that we need to “lighten” up on an institution that breeds hate, intollerance, and discrimination? Many of us have suffered egregious pain in the name of “Religion”…so don’t tell us to lighten up because we don’t believe in your magical virgin or a hateful book that condones selling daughters into slaverly, incest (e.g. Lot’s daughters), stonings, and a wide array of crazy, inhumane, unloving concepts or the institutions that try to proseletzye those concepts…puh leaze Gurl…what we need are more independent thinking gays who reject the notion of organized religion not less. PS: You can be spiritual without being religious.
There is truth in what you say, but you also ignore a larger trend. Faith is on the decline in America. We are following a trend that happen in Europe decades ago. The number of people who claim to be atheist, or agnostic is climbing slowly, but steadily.
While that trend is accelerated in the gay community because of how most of the mainstream faiths have treated us, it is still a mirror of society as a whole.
All you have to do is look at the Atheist movement to remove all references to religion from anything having to do with our government at all. The protests over the inauguration were grotesque, and betray that people forget that Atheism isn’t “not believing in God”, but is instead “believing there is no God”. The movement of the negative away from belief and towards the focus of the belief is significant, but the fact that most people miss that distinction frames the source of this conflict quite nicely. It isn’t unique to the gay community, and trying to address it as a gay issue is doomed to fail because you miss the root of the problem entirely. In missing the root the weed grows back.
Cody I enjoyed reading your column on Faith and the Gay community but there is another side that you have not explored on this issue. There are many of us Gays who have a religious, spiritual belief, philosophy but we choose not to attend an organized religion. For people like me we have a truly personal relationship with our God and we dont accept any of the 6 verses, in fact many of us dont accept the Bible or the Koran or any of the religious writings as the one truth.
My husband is from the South, the Gulf Coast in mississippi, we lived there for one yar and religious affiliation is overbearing in the South.
Imany in the gay community have religious, spiritual beliefs without “partially” suscribing to a partiluar religions “6 verses” that deny us recognition as a fully valued human being. Yes its deplorable that religious leaders tell their flock how horrble a Gay person is (love the Gay person just not their sin) its deplorable becuase it leads to the flock feeling justified in imposing its :religious: belief on Gays receiving EQUAL CIVIL RIGHTS.
I certainly oppose any hostile feelings against any individual or church organization of faith but that does not equate to my being devoid of religious or spiritual beleif. We all need to be cautious not to lump Gays into just one of two camps: church attending Gays and Non-believing Gays, there is a third group like me that hold strong religious, spirtual beleifs without attending or suscribing to a particular church group or religious affiliation.
Well, thanks for your opinion.
What is overlooked here is that for many people, there is no need or desire for orgainzed religion.
To many people – religion is mythology. Long standing, societally supported belief systems that for the most part were created thousands of years ago when our understanding of the world and each other was quite different.
Many of those same people still enjoy a private sense of spirituality in their lives, they just don’t feel the need to express it in any organized, group context.
My feeling is, if it works for you, then good for you. However, I would appreciate it if you would keep it to yourself and I’ll keep my spirituality to myself and we can all get along.
The burden of proof is not on the person who views these “magical” beliefs as irrational and untrue. Beliefs are not facts, not matter how passionately held. I do understand that for many, a belief system can be helpful in times of stress and a lift during the good times – but please don’t presume that all people would be better off with some sort of religion. We are quite content with either a spiritual or agnostic/aetheistic world view.
No, the gay community does not need to have faith in the faithful. The “faithful” need to mind their own business and get on with their lives and stop trying to convince everyone that they would be somehow better off if they saw things at least a little bit the way they do. THAT is mutual respect.
If you want respect, then give it. As hard as it may be to believe, many people have absolutely none of the need or desire to have organized religion in their lives and are quite happy and content.
I don;t feel the need or desire to engage “faithful” people who are “open-minded”. They aren’t doing any more of a favor by being “open-minded” than I am doing them a favor by being “open-minded” and not judging their desire to believe in mythology.
It’s just mutual respect, live and let live. The difference is, we’re not trying to “convert” you away from your belief systems, please stop trying to encourage us to yours.
I am interested in equality for all people. Therefore, anyone who appeals to me by asking me to hold myself to a higher standard (i.e. don’t turn “all of my anger” on religious people even while they are campaigning to take my rights away) is simply fooling him/herself. I have lost all patience with people of “faith” who prove daily that they have no faith, by demanding political signs and wonders (”defense of marriage” anyone?) as constant proof that they are right. FAITH CANNOT BE PROVEN!!! So anyone who says his/her “faith” is why s/he chooses to oppress me is not only a fool, but a dangerous fool.
I agree that since coming out I’ve questioned my faith a lot more since then. I’ve never seen so much contradictory in a book that is said to be the direct word of God when it was written by man and then re-written and interpreted numerous times. Granted I still have my beliefs about life, but I don’t believe in solely one faith anymore, I believe what sounds right to me and dwell upon that instead of a fire and brimstone “jealous and wrathful” God.
I’d be cautious about assuming that anyone’s asking you to believe anything, guys.
The point is this: the people you’re writing off, the people you’re telling to mind their own business and keep their opinions to themselves are people who can vote for us or against us. And they are people within your own community.
It’s a tricky thing to demand to be heard and then say someone else needs to keep their opinion to themselves.
We have to be the change we want to see in the world.
While it may be comforting to have an affirming religious congregation in your life, you cannot claim that religion doesn’t bear the responsibility for the horrendous damage it has done, and continues to do, to sexual, racial and other minorities in society.
Religion has done so much evil in the past, and present, it is rightly viewed by it’s erstwhile victims with suspicion and derision. If a dog bit me, I’d be nuts to try to pat him again. Why should religion get a pass on common sense?
I think the world would be a better place if we conducted our lives, and governments based on reason and evidence, rather than bronze age mythologies about dirt men, flying people, talking snakes, and rib women. That sense of grounding and community that some get from religion is available from joining any other community and putting your heart and soul into it, and being accepted. Try square dancing, or wind surfing, for example! All the benefits, none of the baggage.
If you want community activism or charity, there are tons of groups that exist for those purposes without all the judging, blaming, sin and sacrifice of personal self esteem that the three major religions.
I agree with what Jim said.
Not belonging to an organized religion does not mean one is without faith. On the other hand, just because one belongs to an organized religion and does not actively practice discrimination themselves doesn’t necessarily mean they have any less blood on their hands, as funding and moral support is also part of the problem. I not only blame the terrorist that detonates the bomb, but also the supporters that finance and build the bomb.
My comment is merely going to echo those of a few other comments.
Religion is not necessary. Religion is, in my opinion, man-made. This does not invalidate religion and the wonderful things it can do for people. I myself am extremely spiritual- thought not in Christianity. The larger part of Christianity appears to be destructive and very much against GLBT rights and issues. Whether that’s true or not is not my point- the fact that most Christians use those obscure passages to support their own beliefs is the point.
I am a Neopagan. I feel that GOD is present in all things (pantheist) and also takes many forms (soft to hard polytheist). I am gay and believe that sexuality is sacred. I view the Bible as a largely out-of-date and meaningless book of words. It has certainly held no truths for me, though I believe it can for others.
I enjoy a spiritual life that helps and supports me. I see no reason why people should force themselves into a religion that largely does not accept them. If they feel a spiritual hole, there are countless alternatives out there.
Why the heck would any gay person want to go to church? Gee, I think I want to hear ‘you’re an abomination to god’ for the 10 millionth time because I just can’t hear it enough! Sorry, Christian/Islam/Judiasm have absolutely nothing but hatred for us and they all try to get their religious beliefs made into laws that EVERYONE has to submit to whether they believe or not (Americans really DON’T believe in religious freedom at all…we’ll except for themselves..Christians is what I’m talking about). Sorry, you want to associate with people that hate you, you go right ahead. Don’t cry to me when they shun you. You submitted to it willingly! I will NEVER, EVER submit to that crap and those losers again! EVER!!!!
This is an issue that is close to my heart, and my views seem to change almost daily! I was raised non-denom by my grandmother. All my life I disagreed with this particular church for many, many reasons. On on hand, I do not believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, but I do believe that churches (NOT religion) do serve for positive purposes in many people’s lives. I’m not even sure I believe in God! However, I attend church every week and my pastor is one of my closest friends. I consider myself on the “frontline” of our gay “movement,” as the way I live my life shows our church, family, and community that the way the right-wing group portrays us (the “gays”) is wrong.