When
North Carolina amended its constitution last month prohibiting
any possibility for LGBTQ couples to wed, it comes as
no surprise the loudest voices condemning President Obama�s
support of marriage equality is presently coming from
there.
�The
last time NC amended the constitution on marriage was
in 1875 to ban interracial marriage. We look like a bunch
of backward jack assess down here! Please tell your friends
we don�t all fly confederate flags & thump our Bibles
quoting Leviticus,� my friend Cora from Greensboro,
N.C wrote me in an email.
But
the passing of Amendment One, which now constitutionally
defines marriage as being between a man and a woman has
emboldened many of its Bible-thumping denizens of that
state, especially its ministers, who not only verbally
condemn lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer
(LGBTQ) citizens, to now openly speak of exterminating
us.
�I
figured a way out, a way to get rid of all the lesbians
and queers but I couldn�t get it pass the Congress � build
a great big large fence, 50 or a hundred mile long. Put
all the lesbians in there, fly over and drop some food.
Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals.
And have that fence electrified so they can�t get out,�
Rev. Charles
L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden,
N.C stated in his Mother�s Day sermon, responding to Obama�s
public endorsement of same-sex marriage.
Worley
continues his sermon, explaining what he perceives would
eventually happen to us.
�And
you know what? In a few years they will die out. You know
why? They can�t reproduce. If a man ever has a young�un,
praise God he will be the first.�
Unfortunately,
Worley isn�t the only North Carolinian cleric to brazenly
voice his opinion; his just reached national attention.
Rev.
Sean Harris�s, senior pastor of the Berean Baptist Church
in Fayetteville, reparative therapy advice to parents
in his congregation for their gender non-confirming children
is to engage in assaultive behavior toward them. For effeminate
sons, Harris advice, is to punch them and �crack that
wrist� if they are limp-wristed.
�Dads,
the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you
walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him
a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that.
You were made by God to be a male and you are going to
be a male.�
And
Rev. Ron Baity, a prominent pastor of Winston-Salem and
head of the anti-marriage equality organization Return
America, told his congregation favoring of Amendment One
that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people
were once upon a time justly prosecuted.
�For
300 years, we had laws that would prosecute that lifestyle,�
he is quoted as saying. �We�ve gone down the wrong path.
We�ve become so dumb that we have accepted a lie for the
truth, and we�ve...discarded the truth on the shoals of
shipwreck!�
Given
the country�s positive change toward LGBTQ civil rights,
its backlash from ultraconservative clerics and politicians
won�t stem our progress, but it will always remind us
of our history of homophobic persecution and scapegoating.
For
example, believing that the judicious way to keep account
of those who were infected with the HIV/AIDS virus and
to stop the virus from spreading, conservative political
commentator William F. Buckley Jr. in 1986 suggested that
people with AIDS be tattooed on their buttocks and forearms.
While
we can perhaps now chuckle at this ludicrous suggestion,
this was much of the nation�s mindset. And it was not
that long ago.
Another
example, in an essentialist argument where biology is
believed to determine one�s destiny, all marginal people
to mainstream society- women, the physically challenged
people of color as well as LGBTQ people, etc. - must tune
into this debate about genetic engineering.
If
LGBT people are viewed as genetically flawed from a scientific
point of view, and an abomination before God from both
religious fundamentalist and conservative points of view
that are a lot more pervasive in religious thought then
we like to think, then our unique way of being sexual
and loving in the world is not only looked upon as an
aberration to human sexuality, but it can also ostensibly
be viewed an abhorrence to human life itself that might
need to be exterminated.
With
science having an authoritative voice in society, any
counter moral and religious arguments on our behalf lose
their footing. And while we like to believe that the field
of science is objective and value free of human biases
and bigotries, scientists are, however, human beings who
analyze and interpret their datum from their subjective
and often times politically motivated viewpoints.
A
classic example of how politics informs science is Nazi
German�s extermination plan of gay men, and how Paragraph
175 of the German Criminal Code differentiated between
the type of persecution non -German gay men received from
German gay men because of a quasi- scientific and racist
ideology of racial purity. Richard Plant, makes this point
in �The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals,�
when he stated that �The polices of persecution carried
out toward non- German homosexuals in the occupied territories
differed significantly from those directed against Germans
gays. The Aryan race was to be freed of contagion; the
demise of degenerate subjects peoples was to be hastened.�
NC
has made a backwards move on marriage equality. And a
cleric like Worley maintains the climate.
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion
columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of
the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific
School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a
graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological
Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor
at an African-American church before coming to Harvard
Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She
was recently named to MSNBC�s list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author
of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not�So�Everyday Moments.
As an African-American feminist theologian, she speaks
for a sector of society that is frequently invisible.
Her website
is
irenemonroe.com.
Click here
to contact the Rev. Monroe.
