Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone

There is entirely too much injustice in the world right now. Wars are being fought, car bombs are exploding, innocent people are dying in movie theaters, people are getting laid off, children are being abused and neglected, the environment is imploding, and according to the media, people are only as worthy as their number on a scale. You can't help but see the world crumbling wherever you look, in the unnecessary violence, the corruption, the way we can't even look one another in the eye and have a conversation anymore because we're too busy tweeting Justin Beiber, desperately hoping for a response. You would think that in a world full of awful things, we would be trying to be civilized and respectful and work together as a country, but we're not. In fact, it feels more like the exact opposite is happening. It's like we're actively searching for reasons to hate or discriminate, to prove that "we are right and they are wrong" and nowhere is this more true than the issue of gay marriage.

I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to address this issue or not and to be honest, I wasn't really planning on it. It's tough. There's really no right or wrong answer (although plenty of people are willing to disagree with me on that). There are varying opinions, even within my own family. It's sticky, uncomfortable, and controversial, much more so than anything I've ever attempted to write about. It makes breast feeding and 50 Shades of Gray look like flowers and lollipops and given the fact that I got more than my fair share of backlash for writing about those issues, I had all but decided not to touch this one with a fifty-foot pole.

But then Chick-Fil-A happened. Suddenly it was an issue of a Christian organization donating money to anti-gay marriage organizations because they wanted to maintain the "traditional family". Suddenly it got personal. It got personal because I, like the president of Chick-Fil-A, am a Christian. But maybe I bought the wrong version of the Bible, because in mine Christianity is not synonymous with hatred. It's not synonymous with ignorance. It speaks about loving people and accepting them for who they are, no matter how different they are from you. While part of me thinks "Hey, it's his money, he can donate it to whatever he wants" a louder, stronger part of me thinks that Dan Cathy could have found a much better cause to donate to: Food banks, literacy programs, churches...anyone who would be willing to take millions of dollars and put that money towards a good cause, and to genuinely help people who are in need. I'm at a loss to understand how anti-anything organizations actually help anyone.

Before I get too ahead of myself, I want to express how grateful I am to live in a country with free speech rights, a place where everyone can express their opinion, and express it in a peaceful, thoughtful, intelligent way (if they so choose). Dan Cathy certainly had no problem expressing his opinion, so here is mine:

First and foremost, I believe in God. I believe in the word of God. I'm not going to sit here and try to convince anyone that the Bible is outdated, a work of fiction, or irrelevant because I don't believe any of those things to be true. I know exactly what the Bible says about homosexuality. But I don't want to focus on that. I think that part of the Bible has been focused on enough as it is. I want to focus on two things: First, what exactly constitutes a traditional family and when did politicians (who are notorious for cheating, lying, and general acts of douche baggery...John Edwards, anyone?!) suddenly decide they care so much and secondly, what do hate and hypocrisy have to do with anything?

I get it you guys, I really do. We all wish it was 1950 and we had a family with the loving, hard-working dad, the mom who wore pearls while she vacuumed and had dinner on the table by six pm sharp. The perfect family rounded out by two perfect children (a boy and a girl, both honor roll students, she would be a cheerleader, he would be captain of the football team, naturally), an adorable dog and a white picket fence. A good old fashioned traditional family living happily ever after. In the land of delusions.

The truth (which is probably fairly obvious to all of us by now) is that we don't live in that world. Families don't look like that, and the reason they don't isn't because of homosexuality. Gay people didn't ruin marriage or put a scar on the face of the traditional family. Straight people did actually, with a little thing called divorce and worse, extra marital affairs that lead to divorce. I'm not saying that I'm anti-divorce (unless you're a Kardashian) but divorce put a whole new spin on families. Blended families were created. Kids spent weekdays with family number one and weekends with family number two. White picket fences were replaced with pull-out couches and bribing your kid into liking you more than the other parent. And yet, no one is saying divorce should be illegal because making divorce illegal would be taking away from people's rights, nor are there any limits placed on how many times people should get married or divorced for the same reason; No one wants their right to marry on a whim, get divorced three days later, and remarry a week after that taken away because it would be unfair and unconstitutional. Hmmm. How interesting.

My other big issue when people talk about traditional families is the hypocrisy factor. Everyone's favorite nut-job Sarah Palin tweeted pictures of her and her husband at Chick-Fil-A last week with huge smiles and even bigger, greasy bags overflowing with waffle fries. I found this development especially interesting, given the fact that her daughter had a baby out of wedlock at seventeen to a guy who wants absolutely nothing to do with his own son. How, exactly, is that a traditional family? Or is it acceptable because her daughter isn't gay, so the rest can just be swept under the rug?

Maybe it's because I was raised in a non-traditional family by a single mother who had to work hard (and do it all by herself) to raise a family, but the way I see it, a child being raised by two dads or two moms who are committed to each other and love their child is twice the love and twice the parenting I had. To me, those kids are lucky. Those kids are blessed. Some might argue that I don't understand traditional values because of my childhood, and maybe they're right. But the person who raised me taught me to accept people for who they are and to not judge because it isn't my place to judge anyone. And right now, that lesson seems infinitely more valuable than a white picket fence.

My second point is, no matter what your opinion or what you decide is right or wrong at the end of the day (so long as it's not a politician making the decision for you), the hatred has to stop. I've seen enough "God hates Gay People" signs to last three lifetimes and each and every one makes me sick to my stomach. Know who God hates? Absolutely no one. Anyone who thinks it's okay to say God hates anyone needs to go back and read one of the most famous Bible quotes ever, John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only son". I've read it a million times and I've never noticed a footnote that says *Unless you're gay or *Unless you're a woman or *Unless you like Batman better than Spiderman. Here's some food for thought: After Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was approached by a leper, who's flesh was literally crumbling off of his face, asking to be healed. Back then, it was against Jewish law and custom for Jesus to even touch this person because he was "unclean". He could have been considered a heretic for even acknowledging the man, but instead saw that we are all people, deep down we all need love and acceptance, no matter how different we may be, and he chose to heal him. Talk about someone who understood the importance of doing the right thing, no matter what the people around you consider "right" or "wrong". It would be nice to see even a little bit of that spirit these days.

Yes, the Bible speaks against homosexuality, calling it a sin. And yes, a sin is a sin is a sin. I get it. But is hatred an appropriate response? Is ignorance an appropriate response? Far more times than homosexuality, the Bible talks about loving each other as we love ourselves, accepting one another, and not judging one another, treating others as we would want to be treated. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is John 8:2 in which a woman who is accused of adultery is brought by her accusers to stand before Jesus. He doesn't condone the sin of adultery, but he recognizes that the men who brought her to him are sinners too, and are hypocrites for trying to single her out as a sinner when they were sinners too, just for different reasons. Back then, the punishment for things like adultery was being stoned to death and Jesus challenged the men to face their own hypocrisy by saying that "He who is without sin may cast (throw) the first stone".  My point is, no one in the world is without sin of some sort, and yet here we are, throwing rocks at each other, so ready to think that we're "good" and we're living "the right way" and someone else is "wrong" or that their sin is any worse than ours. It's not. There's no magic chart that lists sin in order from harmless to harmful. It's easy to be a hypocrite, to point out what people are doing wrong to take attention and accountability away from ourselves. It's infinitely harder to take accountability for our actions (or sins) and to realize that when it boils down to it, we're all the same. 

I see it this way: If God truly thinks homosexuality is wrong, that's His place to decide, not mine. All I know is that we are all perishable and I want to spend the limited time I have on this earth loving people, not judging them. I believe we should all have access to the same rights and privileges. We are all human beings. It's a crappy world and we should be in it together, not constantly looking for yet another way to be divided. I think whether you agree with me or not (just for the record, most people in my life fall into the "or not" category, and that's okay with me) I think we should at least agree to treat one another with respect and kindness, no matter what side of the debate we fall on. I have kids to raise in this crazy place and I want them to understand and exercise tolerance, acceptance, open-mindedness and to love with their whole hearts. If that means never again stepping foot in an establishment that doesn't abide by those things, then so be it. 

My point of this blog/amateur Bible study/rant is that, despite being a Christian, I don't stand with companies like Chick-Fil-A. I believe that being a Christian shouldn't automatically mean that I don't support gay marriage. I do support it. I support anything that gives people the rights they deserve and showcases us as equals because we are all equal. I love God and I also love all of the people He created, whether they're black, white, gay, straight, batman, or whatever. I don't think I should have to choose between one or the other. You can think what you want, but that's what my religion means to me.

So all of you Mike Huckabees, Sarah Palins, and Dan Cathys of the world, please do me a favor. Yes, I might be a Christian like you, but clearly our similarities end there. Don't be so quick to lump us all together.

I can only hope that some day everyone in the world will be allowed to marry the person they love more than anything. It's a great experience and we should all have the right to make it our own.