It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Apparently
I've just read in the Globe that Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, is retiring. He cites the pretty much constant death threats as one reason.
"He explained that the pressure — particularly some threats on his life, one of which apparently was pretty gruesome — just has gotten to the point where he's saying I just can't keep doing this forever," said Lee White, a retired physician who serves as senior warden, or layleader, of the Wolfeboro church.Robinson made a lovely video for the It Gets Better Project, Dan Savage's anti-bullying campaign, which is also under fire along with the school anti-harassment programs its shed a light on, for their attempts to push a "hidden homosexual agenda" on public schools. Actually, um, not so hidden, but never mind.
I see their point. Obviously if you say it's not OK to berate, beat up, and bully queer kids (and I mean that in the broadest sense of the word "queer"), you're ramming your gay agenda down bully's throats. And then who'll protect the bullies?
“Of course we’re all against bullying,” the Times quotes "one of numerous pastors" who oppose anti-bullying or "tolerance lessons". “But the Bible says very clearly that homosexuality is wrong, and Christians don’t want the schools to teach subjects that are repulsive to their values.”
Oh, OK.
"We're all against bullying, but God hates fags."
What's a Christian to do? It's a conundrum.
No conundrum, really. Christianity has completely outlived whatever usefulness it may ever have had. It is, in any event, a religion that has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on its hands whom it burned alive and otherwise brutally murdered for daring to be individuals with their own thoughts and ideas or for simply being different. Conspiring in the persecution and bullying of children is actually small change to the Catholic and Christian churches, an afternoon's amusement, as it were.
What a Christian is to do, if said Christian is truly a believer in the basic message of Jesus before centuries of self-aggrandizing, self-perpetuating priests perverted it entirely, is to throw the institution over and start again. Or, better yet, do it without any religion, any deity, based on simple human values of mutual respect and inclusion.
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I agree: no conundrum whatsoever for these pathetic persons. Still all religions have behaved thus. Let's paraphrase Madame Roland's words as her cart passed a statue to Liberty on the way to her guillotining: O Religion, what crimes are committed in your name!
I am sorry to hear of Bishop Robinson's retiring, and I can sympathize with his difficult journey. Nonetheless, while I recognize martyrdom is not savored by anyone, I feel his choice speaks to cowardice. If even a gay churchman tires of standing up to bullys, then why should any other person maintain the barricades? Although others in the GLBT community may have had expectations of him, I never had. Robinson needed only to have been a bishop to his diocese, and not a symbol of some misplaced activism. And his age is really not an issue.
I think it ironic that Los Angeles elected a lesbian bishop, Mary Glasspool, earlier this year. I always figured female clergy (rather than male) would lead the faithful out of their petty divisions. Robinson's just confirmed my theory.
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