Can We All Just Listen To Each Other?
The Gay Is Just Like Being Black Perspective
As an African American I believe that I, my family and the larger Community from which we come know something about discrimination. WE understand the pain, of our past and how the vestiges of racial discrimination still exist in American society, perpetuating stereotypes that lead to lower employment rates, inferior education and social disenfranchisement of other kinds that limit or forbid us and/or our prodigy from full participation in American society. However, many of us believe that it is an unfair argument put forward by the proponents of the LGBTQ+ community to identify their struggle to find partners (people to love) with our struggle not to be isolated because of our color, our race and our culture.
I’ve heard it said that race and culture are culturally constructed. However, everything that human beings identify or define, describe or even discuss is culturally constructed. But the truth is that our presence as a race is an existential reality, not a reality predicated upon what we desire, what we feel, what we want or choose to do. We can never walk out of a room and choose not to be or do black. Our African cultures share certain characteristics and yet from east to west Africa there are distinguishing marks that make us differ from one another (hair type, and facial structure), despite the fact that color, lingering ancient cultural patterns and history unite us.
Both in our historic cultural patterns and in our varied but similar DNA pool, to be black or African is something that cannot and should not be changed. Whenever others see us they see and experience our African(ness). We cannot choose to turn it off nor discard it. We may be retrained to lack appreciation for what we are, yet when others see us, they know us. It is not who we love or what we do behind closed doors that defines us, it is the nature of our being to be African--to be Black. We do not say this because we detest anyone, however much we might disagree with how they choose to live. We are called to love our fellow men and women.
The same cannot be said for the GLTBQ community. In order for it to be so, society must create new categories of humanity with either new or exaggerated characteristics based not in the nature of being but in the nature of desire. There may be exceptions for persons born androgynous. We believe this to be a different phenomena altogether and should not be confused with being gay, lesbian, transvestite or bisexual. It is also different from those who claim to be male or female but trapped in the body of the opposite sex. In this case our society is attempting to build their argument upon what they deem as unscientific, unverifiable information, namely that the soul of a man or a woman (which soul is a scientifically unprovable commodity to them) is so trapped.
We do believe in the soul however, because of what the Bible has taught us about ourselves. We see the desire of a woman or man to participate in society as the opposite of his/her physique as a distortion (or maybe a nature perversion) of their original purpose. The Bible tells us that a man or a woman violates God’s design for him/her when they are “drawn away of their own lusts and enticed.” This being said, it should be known that we do not believe that a person should be harmed (especially physically) because of lust, as long as that lust does not harm or violate another. Physical violence against any person is absolutely wrong.
On the other hand, we do believe that a citizen of the United States has a right by law to choose whom he or she may love, despite our belief that it is wrong. We do not believe however that the government should pass legislation codifying wrong or aberrant behavior or forcing communities who believe in the moral wrongness of those actions to accept them or be forced to accept those actions as normal for them. When they do, it is at that point that we believe that the government in that moment is engaging in the establishment of new national moral norms that may be imposed upon all of its constituents. Such a moral norm “may” be based on an atheism (a non belief in a God), which is a religious or philosophical disposition in and of itself, as the basis for the new morality. To deny God and the historic moral values based upon what has been seen as His revelation to man, and in deference, to create a new morality and new also categories of humanity based upon a nation’s non belief or non acceptance of a revealed God, is as religious as establishing morals and values based upon the predisposition that God does exist and has given to us moral values.
To give to Africans and African Americans the right to function equally in a society regardless of their color is in no way connected to the ideology that grants an individual the freedom to pursue any person that her/she chooses as a lover. One argument (our blackness) is made on the basis of the equality of our racial and cultural humanity; and the other is based upon the right to fulfill one’s desire and or to redefine one’s humanity.
We believe that Americans and Christians should retain their rights to determine what is acceptable behavior for their families and communities without government interference, as in doing so impacts the limits that may be affected in teaching our children responsibility to their God, their families and their communities. Government should not behave as if it is a god, imposing its empirical wisdom upon society and overriding religious and familial values that have before the past 40 years helped lead us to more emotionally stable, less personally violent and family oriented communities.
it is now time for Christians and Americans in general who disagree with the current trend of our local, state and national governments regarding the LGBTQ+ legislation, to become verbal in expressing our view as it might help preserve the rights of the religious (Christian) and the right to dissent without fear of retaliation. We recognize that every human being is defective. The Bible clearly teaches this. No one of us has the right to unjustly judge another. However, we are called to be responsible in our behavior. Even if we claim defective genetics, we are all victims of the same malady. But we can no more blame our moral behavior on our genetics than we can excuse the serial robber for his violent thievery. Can we all just listen to each other? Tell me what you think.
Pastor Robert V. Shipman, Sr.
