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Anti-Gay/Anti-Religious Bigotry on Facebook

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Photo taken from Facebook page “I bet this turkey can get more fans than NOM”

I have been asked a lot lately from Christians why I post so many anti-religious images on Facebook, not just my book page, but also my own personal Facebook page.  The answer is not that I am anti-religion, it’s that I am fighting in a war brought on by right-wing fundamentalist born again Christians who are trying to take away my and every other gay persons rights across the country and even the world.

Just about every day I browse the Facebook “Home” page and see images from such pages as “I bet this turkey can get more fans than NOM“, “Have a Gay Day” and “Wipe out homophobia” just to name a few.  I see pictures of the fundamentalists like the famous Westboro Baptist Church with signs that say “God Hates Fags” among other hateful things.  Then I see pro-gay images like this:

So when people see me posting images like this, they think that I am an anti-religious bigot.  I have been hearing homophobic bible scriptures since I was a teenager, such as Leviticus 18:22 saying “‘Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”  But what they don’t realize is that this was written by a person, not by God.  Whoever wrote that was obviously homophobic.  I believe that if God does exist, he made gay people for a reason.  We aren’t flaws or mistakes and we didn’t choose to be gay or to be abnormal, we were made exactly the way we were supposed to be made.

There are many messed up things in the bible.  In fact, Leviticus says some pretty stupid things like Leviticus 19:27 “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.”  How many religious people do you know who cut their hair and shave their face?  I don’t go around telling them how sinful they are, so why are they telling me how I’m going to hell for being gay?

And right next to that in Leviticus 19:28 it says “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.”  How many right-wing fundamentalist born again Christians do you see walking around with a tattoo on their body?  Cause I see a lot of them.  When I bring it up they tell me “Oh I did that a long time ago when I was a sinner before I found Jesus so it doesn’t count.”  Uh, I’m pretty sure it counts even if you say that Jesus wiped away all of your past sins.  I’m sorry but if it’s still on your body, it still counts to me.

I don’t have anything against religious people, it’s the religious people who preach to me that I am going to hell for being gay, that is where I have an issue.  I used to go to church every Sunday when I was living in Bakersfield in 1981/83.  I even went to church band camp.  I wasn’t really hard-core, I was just a regular christian just like everyone else who didn’t push my religion down people’s throats.  I was even a Mormon when I was 14 and went to the Mormon church and even went to the Mormon teen dances.  When I was 16 years old and worked at McDonald’s a customer started yelling at me because I asked if it was for “here or to-go” and he started cursing “the lord’s name in vain” and I got so upset that I almost started crying.  Not because he yelled, but because of what he said.  It really hurt my heart that he said what he said.

I stopped being religious when I came out of the closet and people started beating the bible into me.  My first boyfriend’s (who I call “William” in my book) mother used to preach Leviticus to me every time I saw her, she is who preached my religion out of me.  She is who made me the activist that I am today, well she and my sister who used to preach that I was going to hell for being gay (who later apologized to me for that).

Here is a great example of why I am so angry with the fundamentalist right-wing born again Christians.

Then there is this video.  Fischer: “It Is Altogether Right To Discriminate Against Homosexual Behavior” – YouTube

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v_PjOYGZ0o&feature=player_embedded

This is what we (the LGBTQIA community) are fighting against.  The right-wing fundamentalist born again Christians say that we are anti-religious bigots, but they started a war against gay people.  We aren’t anti-religion, we are just anti-those people.

All gay people want is to live their lives in peace without any controversy, but we have these evil Christians who have waged a war against us and all we are doing is fighting back, that’s all.  We don’t care who Christians worship, we just don’t want to be told that we are going to hell or that you don’t accept our lifestyle (as if we asked for permission).  If the right-wing fundamentalist born again Christians will stop threatening, bullying, beating and killing gay people, then we will be cool.  We just want to live normal lives, that’s all.

So the next time you see me posting something like this on Facebook or anywhere else, now you know why.

Oh and by the way, even though I am not a Christian anymore, I still believe in the positive teachings of Jesus Christ.  My favorite bible scripture is of him saying Matthew 5:43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'” 44 “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” 45 “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  I personally believe that Jesus was a good person because he fed the poor and hungry and he healed the sick and gave sight to the blind, or so I have heard.  At any rate, I don’t hate Jesus, because Jesus was a good person.  I also love the Facebook page Jesus Loves Gays because I believe that he does.

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p style=”text-align: justify;”>Stepping off my soapbox for now.

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