What For

In my first post, I described how I came to care very much about people who are gay. Thanks to Tucker for his very thoughtful and thorough comments; I recommend reading them (though they will likely find their way into a future post).

Now I'd like to explain why I believe homosexuality and what it has to do with government and the church is important. Like a lot of beliefs, this has been informed both by intellectual processes and emotion. 

Here is a quick list of the things that began to chip away at my prejudice:
1. I saw that some people who are gay work hard trying to be straight for a long time before coming out. Not only was homosexuality not a choice, some wish very much for the ability to choose heterosexuality and are unable to do so.
2. I learned that some gay people are virgins who have the same views about extramarital sex that I do.
3. I figured out that a heterosexual woman is just as able to contract HIV as a man who is gay. (It is, however, more difficult for a dude to get it from a woman given the mechanics of intercourse.) 

(You'll notice that the first two revelations may often only be possible if one knows someone who is gay.)

Moreover, the arguments against same-sex marriage began to look weak. For instance,  my high school self was content with the procreation argument. But my 23-year-old self had some questions after considering straight couples struggling to conceive, post-menopausal woman, and my friend who can't stand children and feels zero desire to ever carry, birth, or raise one. 

Meanwhile, I began to ask questions about what we expect of the Bible, whether those expectations are faithful, and how the Bible has been used in the past to defend the subjugation of various groups. (More on these topics later.) I also began to give some thought to (but have yet to do any solid reading on) the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the meaning of 'liberty and justice for all'. 

All of these thoughts led me to believe that at the very least, I owed it to 4% of the population to put some effort into investigating this.

Interspersed with this intellectual development was emotional development. That's an inevitable piece that comes when one gets to know people, it turns out. 

I think there are two major things that have fed my emotions. The first is the sort of talk I hear from some Christians and some organizations that some Christians support. It is characterized by falsehoods (equating homosexuality with pedophilia, as one example), fear (see previous), and less-than-stellar logic (e.g., the claim that kids do better in traditional biological mom/dad households, if applied to its logical ends, could be used to support a ban on all divorce, remarriage, single parenting, and adoption. Not to mention the fact that kids do fine when they have two parents of the same sex.) 

The second force to shape my emotions around this subject is an event I asked permission to share about. Here's the story as I understand it: 

Tucker, after long, intense struggle against homosexuality, accepts it while studying at a conservative seminary, and comes out to a select few people. He meets David, an amazing man who is also gay and a follower of Christ. David senses a calling to bring reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community, and his parents have rejected him. After that painful oh-I-don't-know-how-I-feel process that some couples go through, David and Tucker commit to dating exclusively, and syrupy bliss abounds. 

A couple months in, Tucker, David, and some friends attend a LGBT film festival. They live in Fresno, which is apparently nothing like San Fransisco, as evidenced by the protesters, who stand outside the theater to make sure everyone going in knows that God hates them. David's previously mentioned predilection leads him to approach a group of these protesters with suggestions like, "Hey guys, don't you think this just perpetuates the hate?" They don't take real well to this, and respond with, "We'll fucking kill you!" and the like. Tucker encourages David to disengage. They and the friends enter the theater and reconvene at a coffee shop afterward.

Tucker has studying to do and is the first to leave. David and the other friends head off to their respective cars. David parked in a different lot entirely.

So those protesters may have been assholes, but they were not liars. Armed with a baseball bat, one looked on while two proceeded to shatter David's legs, knock out a few teeth, collapse a lung, destroy a kidney, cause some pretty serious internal bleeding, and bruise everything else. 

The crew in the emergency department had to do some quick prioritizing in order to save David's life, and we find out rods will be placed in his legs, and he will spend six months in a wheelchair before he is able to attempt to walk again. 

Two months into his recovery, the lung that collapsed during the assault collapses again, the other lung becomes terribly inflamed, and David is re-admitted, this time in a coma. This lasts about a week, until he wakes up just long enough for him and Tucker to spend some last moments together, for several of his friends to say goodbye, and for his parents to ask for his forgiveness. 

This is why when I hear someone claim that "gay people have liberty," I get very, very angry.