New Zealand activist Ray Comfort joined Jerry Newcombe this week to discuss his new movie, “Audacity,” which “delivers an unexpected, eye-opening look at the controversial topic of homosexuality” by focusing on a young character who struggles to “defend his convictions about homosexuality and gay marriage.”…. “I was flying from Germany to London, sat next to a middle-aged gentleman,” he recalled. “I said, ‘How’re you doing,’ he says, ‘Good,’ I says, ‘You got a family?,’ he says, ‘I have a husband.’ It was like, ‘Oh. Where do I go from here?’ Do I say, ‘Oh that’s nice, tell me about him’ or what? And it was awkward.”…. “Imagine what it would be like for the average Christian who isn’t kind of confrontational,” he said. “And I realized there’s a real need to show Christians how to relate to homosexuality.”
About a year ago, I went back to Minnesota with Erin to visit my family. One of the things we did that weekend was to get together with someone I played soccer with in college and his wife, both of whom were good friends at Macalester. I hadn’t seen them since college, and when we got together I explained to Becky that I’d been nervous before meeting them and asked, “What do you say to someone you haven’t seen in 31 years?” She looked at me, smiled, and said, “You say ‘Hello! How are you?’” Yeah, it really was that simple. You smile, exchange pleasantries, and then start catching up on where life has taken you. Turns out it’s pretty easy to be comfortable with long-lost friends when you take that approach.
This is part of the reason I found the question of how to sit next to gay people on airplanes so amusing. I suppose if you proceed from the assumption that gay people are somehow unclean, dangerous, contagious, and/or have horns growing out of their head, then wondering how to talk to them might seem a legitimate question. But what if you start from the assumption that “gay people” are just “people?” Even if you disapprove of their sexuality or “lifestyle” (You have a right to your opinion, of course, but there’s no corresponding right to subject anyone to it), “gay people” are human beings. They may live, love, think, and/or believe differently, but if you’re a Christian and sincerely endeavor to live a Christ-like life, you default to love, acceptance, and tolerance- not hatred, bigotry, and homophobia.
The idea that there’s a “recommended” way for good, God-fearing, Christians to talk to gay people seems patently absurd. We’re not talking about people carrying a transmittable disease; you can’t catch “Teh Gay” from being in close proximity to a gay person. About the only thing you might catch is some humanity, which can happen when you proceed from a place that assumes “gay people” are “people.”
Comfort predicted that “it won’t be long until pedophilia is embraced by this world, we live in such moral relativism,” so conservative Christians will have to continue to stand strong and tell people what is right and wrong.
“The time will come when people who are so angry about pedophilia now will be vilified and looked on as hateful if they say, ‘No, this is not right,’” he said. “And what we’ve got to remember is that, as Christians, we’re like police officers right in the middle of a crime area. And criminals hate the police, they’ll kill a police officer, they don’t even know who he is, because of the badge he wears, because he stands for righteousness. And we’re going to be hated if we stand up and say, ‘Look, pedophilia is wrong, homosexuality is wrong, fornication, blasphemy is wrong.’”
The trick for gay rights opponents, he said, is “not to vilify homosexuals but to say , ‘Hey, we care about you and we want to see you in Heaven, not Hell.’”
If you believe that homosexuality and same-sex marriage is wrong, then good on you. There’s an option available to you- don’t engage in homosexual relationships or marry someone of the same gender. Problem solved, eh? What you don’t have the right to do is to inflict your moral framework on someone who happens to think, believe, live, and/or love differently from you. You don’t get to judge, you don’t get to preach. If you choose to deny their humanity and their right to live in a manner they consider appropriate and authentic, that’s on you.
I think the key phrase here is “gay rights;” which frames an arrogant world view that holds your religion and morality to be so superior as to allow you to feel justified in attempting to force upon others. Yes, there are a few moral absolutes in this world- murder and theft are wrong, for instance- but how people choose to express love and sexuality is, as a very wise person once told me, none of your damned business.
There’s no such thing as “Gay rights;” there are only human rights. Being a Christian doesn’t provide one with the auuthority to determine what rights a person is to be afforded. If you seriously believe gay rights to be a problem, I’d submit you’re far too concerned with the private lives of others…and not nearly enough with getting (and keeping) your own house in order.
When you begin to see “gay people” as “people,” you begin to create a world in which peace, harmony, and co-existence become possible. As Elvis Costello once famously sang, “What’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?”
Despite Comfort’s clear and obvious self-righteous arrogance, there’s no “real need to show Christians how to relate to homosexuality.” There IS a real need to treat people with dignity, decency, and respect for their humanity and right to live their lives in a manner that feels appropriate and authentic to them. That’s no one’s business but their own. Anyone thinking their personal morality provides Divinely-inspired superiority and worthiness is giving themselves FAR too much credit.
So how does one relate to gay people? How about starting with, “Hello, how are you?” and proceeding from the assumption that people are people? You might be surprised at how much easier it becomes to be part of humanity when you start from a place of acceptance and tolerance.
