No Christian church can call themselves a Christian church if they hate or won't tolerate "groups" of peoples. Gay, ethnic or sinful. Bottom line, is there ANYBODY who is a Christian who will disagree. So what happens then? The word hate is replaced with a sentence: "love the sinner, hate the sin". If you read my posts regularly then you know how much I hate that sentence.
When you decide to be a Christian you give up the right to discrimination. Period. In prison ( though I know it happens out of prison, however, I'm speaking of my own experience) we have a Diversity Committee. Their role is to put on events and celebrate the cultural differences of everyone in prison. His year LGBTI was apart of that. So certain members chose not to participate while some did. Those that did all gave speeches at the event, some were Christian we even had a Muslim. They all had powerful messages that preached tolerance and love. Stuff that the LGBT community needs to hear from religious groups. I sat down with all of them before the event and asked them a simple question. Are you ready for the storm after the event, because your peers are going to demand an answer? All said yes. Confidently.
Here we are ten days after the event and I have guys coming to me giving me war stories from their peers. Specifically their Christian peers.
I talk to racist groups in here all the time, they are not protesting equality in prison, they aren't gay bashing. But the church is? What?
Inmates are getting up before their congregations, which is other inmates and condemning LGBT people and their supporters or even sympathetic parties. In the same breath justifying themselves. What happened? When I got saved I knew that God loved me. I had no doubt. Why would anyone want to change that? Is that the charge of Christ? Did I miss that part of the Bible where Jesus commanded His disciples "Go find the gays and persecute the hell out of them". Funny how homosexuality was around back then and Jesus never addressed it...just saying. Paul did but he was referring to casual sex outside of marriage and idol worship. He labelled it as sodomy. Which is a general term for "any kind of sex outside the ordinary". Like fellatio or bestiality.
I have requested a meeting with our Chaplain here to talk about gay bashing in church. This is a problem that if its not fixed now will lead to problems later. Pray for us here, LGBT people are being isolated and some staff is working extremely hard to remedy this while some are unknowingly promoting division. Which in prison leads to violence.
Help me come up with solutions, what have you done in your situation?
For those of you that are experiencing this kind of thing and are seeking love but receiving hate, know that God loves you, but His children are just as broken as everything else. Don't be like them and hate them, love them anyway. Help them understand us by displaying patience and love. Unlike them.
With Love
Jeff Utnage
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