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Spiritual Essence
| Spiritual Essence Anti-Gay Clergy Do NOT Speak For God |  |
by Skeeter Sanders
We’ve all heard the incessant drumbeat from anti-gay religious leaders for more years than we care to remember.
The drumbeat that the Bible condemns homosexuality (and, by unspoken extension, bisexuality) as “an abomination.”
The drumbeat that God will “punish with wicked” for the “sin” of being gay or bi – with the Rev. Jerry Falwell even going so far as to call AIDS such a punishment.
The drumbeat that heterosexual, monogamous marriage that produces children is the only expression of sexual love that is acceptable in the eyes of God.
The one thing that these leaders all have in common is a claim that their anti-gay position is authorized and supported by God through the Bible, which they consider the literal Word of God.
I am not a minister. Neither am I a priest, a rabbi, an imam, a mullah, a bishop, a cardinal, a pope, nor a patriarch. In short, I am not a member of the generally-recognized clergy.
But I am a messenger. And the message I have will come as a shocking newsflash to the members of the anti-gay clergy:
They do not speak for God. Not a single one of them. In fact, they are speaking in diametric opposition to God!
Their very definition of God as a God of wrath, a God of hellfire and damnation, a God of judgment is a lie. It is the most obscenely destructive lie ever perpetrated on the human race – the ultimate Big Lie.
Indeed, so obscene and so destructive is this Big Lie about God, that if I were an attorney – and God was my client – I would sue those clergy members on God’s behalf for libel and defamation of character.
I would also sue them for billions in damages on behalf of the millions of people whose lives have been ruined by these clergy members’ sick and twisted use of God to justify their own warped view of human sexuality in general and of homosexuality in particular.
It is because of these clergy members’ sick and twisted use of God to justify their hatred of gay and bi people that many of us live tragic lives filled with fear, loathing and confusion, keeping us separated from God, separated from each other, and even separated from our true selves.
In so doing, the anti-gay clergy are working against the will of God. What they are doing is nothing less than tyranny. Tyranny against our spirits, tyranny against our very souls.
For herein lies a divine truth that the anti-gay clergy do not want anybody to hear: Our sexuality is a precious gift from God. And that gift from God – which is part and parcel of God’s greatest gift, which is love – is not for heterosexuals only.
The anti-gay clergy are liars and blasphemers when they say that God will condemn you for being gay or bisexual. God will do no such thing. God will never do such a thing.
Why would God, who loves all people on Earth unconditionally and unceasingly, condemn you for being something that God gave you as a gift of love? That makes utterly no sense.
Not only will God will never condemn you for being “queer,” God will bless you when you freely and openly accept God’s gift of being gay or bisexual as an integral part of you.
“But that’s not what the Bible says!” the anti-gay clergy will retort. Well, I’ve got another newsflash for them: The Bible is not the literal Word of God. It cannot be so, for the Bible is, in fact, a doctored document.
The Bible was tampered with by the Roman Catholic Church in the fourth century – a time when the Roman Catholic Church was the only Christian church in existence and, more importantly, was made the state religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine.
The church convened a council, the Council of Nicea, in which literally dozens of gospels and other scriptures were deleted from the Bible. Inserted into the Bible were pronouncements on human behavior – and the myth of Satan – that previously did not exist.
With its secular power granted by Emperor Constantine as the state religion of Rome, the Roman Catholic Church used that power to ram its dogma down the throats of everyone in the empire – until the seventh century, when the leaders of the church in the east broke away and formed the Orthodox Church. But the damage was done.
After the Protestant Reformation, every subsequent Protestant version of the Bible published since the King James Version in 1611 reflects the massive tampering with the original Scriptures by the Roman Catholic Church’s fourth-century Council of Nicea.
The Bible, therefore, is not God’s final word. Not by a long shot. Those who say it is do not know God.
They do not know God is a God of unconditional love. Indeed, they do not know that God IS unconditional love.
They do not know that God favors no single religion, no single race, no single nation, no single ethnic or cultural group, and no single sexual orientation.
There is no form and there is no manner in which the expression of love that is pure and true is inappropriate. Love that is pure and true comes from God. It seeks to damage or hurt no one. It seeks to avoid the possibility of damage or hurt to anyone.
God loves all. God celebrates all. God is one with all. And all are one with God.
Yes, the anti-gay bigots will revile you. Yes, they will curse you. Yes, they will say all manner of evil things about you falsely in God’s name.
But do not fear them. Indeed, defy them – secure in the knowledge that God will never do to you what the bigots think God will do. And God will bless you by bringing people into your life who will love you exactly as you are.
Blessed Be!
Skeeter Sanders was raised a Roman Catholic. He is now a practicing Pagan affiliated with the Burlington chapter of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. He lives in Essex Junction.