Originally Posted by
loosechickens
"Sorry you encountered racist attitudes in your family. Its very disheartening. Do you consider all Christians to be fundamentalist wackos? Your post seems to say so. Correct me if I am wrong. Do you routinely ask people about their sexual orientation? Do you think all Christians hate gays? I know I am tossing out a lot of questions, but I would be interested in hearing your reply. Thank you." (poetry_writer)
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The racial attitudes expressed in my family (and in many, many white families in the fifties.......remember the "white flight" to the suburbs, to get away from "THEM"?) were very common at the time. With time, my family's attitudes changed. My father was one of the first in his business to hire and promote minority managers, which was a huge step forward for him. My mother grew and changed, began to see the error of seeing African-Americans as somehow "less than" she and her family and friends, although, sadly, my grandmother, even in her last illness, embarassed us all by pitching a fit because she was placed in a room in the hospital with a black woman (who, luckily had far more grace and dignity than my grandmother), died without changing her viewpoints. My uncle came to accept black families in his church, and his son, who became a Lutheran minister, not only worked for civil rights, but has never shown prejudice and has friends of all races, religions and sexual orientation.
SO....it is possible to change, although change is hard, and seems to come more easily to the young than to those who are very set in their ways.
And, of course I don't think all Christians "hate gays". I'm not even sure that very bigoted fundamentalist Christians "hate" them, but rather, fear them, fear that somehow their own families will be "sullied" by the "sinfulness", etc., which makes gays and lesbians who grow up in fundamentalist Christian families have a hard row to hoe, but many, many Christians, as they were in the matter of civil rights for African-Americans, not only accept, but support equality for gays, marriage for gays, and full civil rights, as they would support for anyone else.
To me, (and you may disagree), it is not the "Christianness" that is the problem, it is the fundamentalist, black and white thinking, which is really no different in many ways from the black and white thinking of the Muslim fundamentalists and the Taliban, or those of any other religion who hold absolute, "my way or the highway" viewpoints, and use passages from religious books to reinforce and amplify their prejudices. (Although, conveniently ignoring other passages, with which they do not agree).
I don't "routinely" ask people their sexual orientation, and honestly don't need to, as most gay and lesbian people, and straight people, for that matter, are open as to their orientation, making it obvious, as we get to know them. I'm sure that I know people very peripherally that I have no idea whether or not they are gay or straight, but most people that I actually KNOW, it's an open acknowledgement and knowledge, and people are accepted for themselves, with gayness or straightness just one more aspect of their personhood, not necessarily the defining factor, any more than my straightness is a defining factor for me.....just part of who I am.
Here's what I think. I think that people who have fears and prejudices (and yes, extending into bigotry sometimes), have a tendency to look to their religion, for example, to buttress what they already believe. So, some Christians, having fears and dislike of gays, or fears about their "sinfulness" (and that it might, somehow, be "catching"), look in the Bible, search the Old Testament, and say, "see.....see......the Bible agrees with me!". (there was someone famous one time who said, "isn't it amazing that people's gods all seem to have the same prejudices that they have?").
The fact that they consider themselves followers of Jesus, and Jesus had absolutely nothing to say about homosexuality, and a great deal to say about accepting one's brothers and sisters, and loving all people, caring for the poor, etc., doesn't seem to compute. Only the words in the Old Testament that reinforce their own prejudices are used for buttressing their argument.
They don't boycott the Red Lobster because people are in there eating shellfish, or think that people should be put to death for not honoring the sabbath, or disrespecting their parents. They don't believe it is o.k. to sell their daughters into slavery, etc. All things that are in that same Old Testament, but are things they no longer believe. But the things that are in the Old Testament that agree with their own feelings are somehow sacrosanct. It doesn't make sense.
Which is why attitudes are changing, because the religious arguments against gay rights and gay marriage have no more basis in fact than forbidding marriage between races, or using the bible to justify Jim Crow laws in the south back in the day, or slavery (because it was in the bible) even earlier.
Prejudices die hard....it takes awhile. But they never change unless we go through these uncomfortable times, upset some sacred applecarts, and finally, have the last generation that still holds the prejudices to move onto their next appointed existence. That is slowly happening with African-Americans......(who, born during WWII, and growing up before civil rights, could have believed back in the fifties that we would elect a mixed race President?), and attitudes of racial prejudice are far more prevalent in older people than in younger ones. It's the same with sexual orientation....older people, especially people of a specifically fundamentalist religious belief, have a very hard time with it, but younger people see it as almost a "non-event", and have a hard time even imagining why gay people even have to fight for their rights, such as being able to marry the person they love, or in areas like serving in our military, where gays have ALWAYS served, even if closeted, and where pretty much every other democratic country in the world has been having them serve openly for a long time. We're really in the backwater in that area, too.
I go on and on, but I hope I've answered your questions. Change is harder for some people than for others, and some cling to old prejudices long past the time to have laid them down. But time will solve the problem. That, and people being willing to stand up for justice, civil rights and fairness. It is, after all, the American Way.
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