Bahamas: Dismantling lecture on homosexuality

"God, in His grace, has already revealed the truth. It is our responsibility to seek out that truth, if we so choose. As ministers we have a greater responsibility to seek out the truth because we will be held accountable to correctly teach it,"

African-American minister, K Darnell Giles in the preface to his book, 'What Did Jesus Say? Why The Bible Did Not Condemn Homosexuality'.



By TANEKA THOMPSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
tthompson@tribunemedia.net:


NEARLY three weeks after I wrote an Insight article exposing the use of Biblical scriptures to demonise and ostracise gays and lesbians as a fallacy, I became the target of ridicule from one of our country's most prominent clergymen.

In a nearly 3,000 word retort, Pastor Lyall Bethel, senior pastor of Grace Community Church, questioned what authority I have to "passionately lecture" the "unsuspecting general public" on the "gay militant agenda". Juxtaposed next to a photo of the smiling pastor, appearing squeaky clean in a suit and tie, was a lengthy assault on gays, riddled with questionable statistics and quotes primed to put fear and prejudice in readers' minds.

Pastor Bethel, who accused me of naiveté, in his attempt to legitimise his claim that gays are disease-ridden, immoral folk, went so far as to cite the work of "Doctor" E Fields of Marietta, Georgia. "Doctor" Fields has been exposed as a non-practicing chiropractor, known white supremacist, neo-Nazi and member of the Klu Klux Klan. The Anti-defamation League, the United State's leading civil rights agency formed in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism and now all forms of bigotry, has extensive details on Mr Fields' decades-long links to racist and fascist groups.

Conservatives, who in the past have unwittingly cited Fields' material, have publicly apologised and distanced themselves from Fields, the author of "Is Homosexual Activity Normal". In my naiveté, I would expect that an upstanding man like Pastor Bethel, a respected black Christian leader, will follow suit.

But I digress.

As Pastor Bethel rebuked me, he attempted to undermine the gay rights movement. He subversively linked all gays with paedophilia, disease, extreme levels of domestic violence, promiscuity - even providing statistics to claim that gays run a higher risk of getting murdered than their straight counterparts. He also scoffed at my comparison of today's gay struggle to the historic civil rights movement in the United States. Yet he overlooked the thrust of my argument: That there is room for interpretation of Biblical scriptures used to condemn gays and therefore a religious argument against sexual orientation is invalid. But this is an issue I will revisit later.

First, I want to dismantle several statements in the pastor's "enlightened" lecture.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION IS A CIVIL RIGHT


Pastor Bethel lists numerous goals of "the gay militant agenda" , which he said were expressed during the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. His selective account of the event shocked me. I was surprised that he forgot to mention that several high-profile black civil rights leaders threw their support behind the April 25 protest, which called for an end to discrimination of gays in the military. On February 26, 1993, The Washington Post reported that leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) endorsed the march, one of the largest protests in the DC area.

"The NAACP has always been in the forefront in the struggle for equal rights," said George Carter, then deputy director of the NAACP, at a press conference ahead of the march. The Post reported that at the time, the NAACP's board of directors had adopted a stance "to end discrimination against gay men and lesbian Americans in areas of American life where all citizens deserve equal protection and equal opportunity under the law."

According to The Boston Globe, before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of exuberant gay men and lesbian women attending that march, Reverend Benjamin Chavis, then executive director of the NAACP said: "We must be against all forms of injustice. We must be against treating all people unfairly, because of their race, their class or their sexual orientation."

This alone unravels one of Pastor Bethel's fallacious statements, which claimed that American civil rights leaders do not empathise with the gay community nor see similarities in their plight. Pastor Bethel mocked me because I drew a correlation between African Americans' struggle for equality to the plight of gays worldwide. "Sexual preference is nothing like skin colour," he Writes. "Homosexuality is not a civil right. It is an affront to African-Americans to say having past generations being prevented from taking a drink from a public water fountain or being sprayed down by fire hoses in a public park was on par with preventing a man from marrying another man."

He goes on to quote American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who said in a 2004 Boston Globe article that gays were never "called three-fifths of a person in the Constitution". What Mr Bethel does not tell you is that in that same article, Mr Jackson said he supports "equal protection under the law" for gay couples.

And what of Julian Bond, the NAACP's chairman from 1998 until February of this year, a champion to the gay and lesbian community for his fight for the rights of all people? As he received an award from the Human Rights Campaign in 2005, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political organisation in the US, Mr Bond was asked if gay rights are civil rights.

He said, "Of course they are. Civil rights are positive legal prerogatives - the right to equal treatment before the law. These are rights shared by all - there is no one in the United States who does not - or should not - share in these rights.

"When others gain these rights, my rights are not reduced in any way. The fight for civil rights is a win/win game; the more civil rights are won by others, the stronger the army defending my rights becomes. My rights are not diluted when my neighbour enjoys protection from the law - he or she becomes my ally in defending the rights we all share.

"For some, comparisons between the African-American civil rights movement and the movement for gay and lesbian rights seem to diminish the long black historical struggle with all its suffering, sacrifices and endless toil. However, people of colour ought to be flattered that our movement has provided so much inspiration for others, that it has been so widely imitated, and that our tactics, methods, heroines and heroes, even our songs, have been appropriated by or served as models for others," Bond said, according to the October 15, 2005, issue of the Atlanta Inquirer.

Mr Bond, as I did in my earlier piece, even compared the controversy surrounding gay marriage to the bigoted criticisms of interracial marriage during eras of racial tension: "We know there was a time, not so long ago, when black people in this country couldn't marry the person of their choice either."

This information is readily available to anyone with an internet connection, yet Pastor Bethel omitted these references from his essay. I wonder why.

THE 'AGENDA'


Pastor Bethel, and like-minded persons, are quick to point out that they are not fighting the gay individual but rather they are waging war on "the gay agenda". Pastor Bethel takes the words of writer Michael Swift - which are widely accepted as satire - and omits the crucial first line of his essay, which puts the tone of the paper into context.

"This essay is an outré (bizarre), madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor," writes Swift in the preface to his 1987 article, The Gay Manifesto. In his hasty essay, Pastor Bethel ignores this introduction - in the typical vein of extremists - only exposing readers to carefully selected portions of Swift's piece. But surely, the pastor can grasp the concepts of satire and farce.

Too many times I've heard the word agenda - which is simply a list of things to be done - used as if it is a secret, evil plot to take over the world (insert evil laugh here). Uber conservatives and fundamentalists throw the phrase "gay agenda" around like a conspiracy theory, as if other minority groups and, people in general, don't have their own interests to push as they fight for their rights to be heard in this unfair world.

"Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are as diverse in our political beliefs as other communities ... notions of a 'homosexual agenda' are rhetorical inventions of anti-gay extremists seeking to create a climate of fear by portraying the pursuit of civil rights for LGBT people as sinister," the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has stated.

Right now in the United States, there is a heated debate between African-American leaders on whether or not President Barack Obama needs to advance the "black agenda" in the face of rising unemployment levels within the black sector, as the US reels from the job losses brought on by the recession. Embroiled in this dispute is Reverend Al Sharpton, and author and talk show host Tavis Smiley. Mr Smiley - who reportedly planned to host a panel of civil rights leaders and scholars entitled "We Count: The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda" - has lambasted the reverend for saying President Obama does not need to identify a black agenda to properly serve the needs of that community.

A Google search of "black agenda" turns up 20,600,000 results. A search for the "feminist agenda" reveals 895,000 results. A similar search on "gay agenda" provides 5,050,000 results. So if other minority groups are pushing their causes, and proudly label them as agendas, why should we fear one from the gay community?

Because being gay is "vile" with "painful and sometimes deadly consequences," says Mr Bethel.

DEBUNKING THE MYTHS


If a non-objective reader drew nothing else from the pastor's reproof, it would be that all gays are child molesters, infected with a myriad of nasty diseases, violent, and intent on destroying the family. Throughout his piece, the pastor clumps homosexuality with the illicit act of paedophilia, as if the two are interchangeable.

He says that homophobes are right to fear gays as molesters ready to snatch little children out of their beds. He mentions an association - the North American Man and Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) - not mentioning that the fringe group has long been ostracised from and denounced by the international gay community for advocating for legal sex with young boys.

"These goals (of NAMBLA) constitute a form of child abuse and are repugnant to GLAAD," the group has said. NAMBLA has been subject to intense investigation and raids by the FBI, has about 1,200 members worldwide.

However it is not a new phenomenon for people to disenfranchise minorities by painting them all as lecherous fiends.

"Members of disliked minority groups are often stereotyped as representing a danger to the majority's most vulnerable members. For example, Jews in the Middle Ages were accused of murdering Christian babies in ritual sacrifices. Black men in the United States were often lynched after being falsely accused of raping white women. In a similar fashion, gay people have often been portrayed as a threat to children," writes Dr Gregory Herek, professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, and an authority on sexual prejudice, in the essay Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation.

Pastor Bethel says he is arguing based on the facts, and lists a number of dubious statistics detailing, among other things, the high rates of violence, disease and promiscuity among homosexuals. The conclusion he would like persons to reach is that gays are afflicted with these problems only because they are homosexuals. Using his line of thinking, I wonder what Pastor Bethel would say about the high rate of violence among African-Americans in the US? Is it because they are black?

Of course not. What is true however, is that in many countries both gays and blacks are classified as minority groups. As such, they have historically been subjected to discrimination, violence and marginalised. Indeed this pattern repeats itself among oppressed minorities around the world including American Indians, non white Hispanics, etc.

On the question of promiscuity, I don't believe heterosexuals possess the moral high ground on this. Here in the Bahamas the most recent figures released by the Department of Statistics revealed that out of the 5,126 live births in the Bahamas in 2007 - 3,047 of them were to unwed mothers. Young girls between the ages of 15 and 19, who accounted for 604 live births in the respective period, had 581 children out of wedlock.

GAYS AND GOD


After my earlier article was published, I received an email from an angry reader who stressed to me that there should be no debate on this subject because the Bible decrees being gay an "abomination". The reader added that if God intended gays to be a part of the natural order, he would have created "Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve".

K Darnell Giles, writes that the Creation story and a handful of other scriptures have been used by extremists to justify hatred and exclusion of gays. But this stance is based on "historical church practice and rumours" rather than an educated analysis of the Bible, Giles contends.

He explains that one cannot interpret today's Bible without understanding the cultural context of the scriptures. Scriptures that were translated into English from ancient Hebrew and Greek languages, which may not have had equivalent English translations.

It is argued that God created a man and a woman to populate the earth in His image, something extremists argue is impossible in a gay relationship therefore against God's master plan.

For this argument to hold water, it would have to apply to sterile men or infertile women, people who are biologically or otherwise incapable of reproducing.

"Are these men and women to be cast away by God because they are not bearing His image through procreation? Are they committing some type of sin because they cannot or choose not to produce children? Of course not," says Giles in his book, What Did Jesus Say? Why the Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality.

"I believe African Americans, above all other people, owe it to themselves to take a deeper look at the scriptures for a clearer understanding of its teaching on homosexuality instead of passively continuing the marginalizing of this people group.

"For hundreds of years, African American people have been oppressed as homosexuals are today, although in manners and with methods far more harsh.

"Our oppressors misinterpreted the same Bible to enslave our ancestors; and it is now used to marginalize and teach ignorance about homosexuals. The same holds true for how women have been treated in the distant and recent past within church culture and society as a whole," wrote Giles.

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?


I don't see it as a stretch to say that Pastor Bethel responded so vehemently to my article because he thought it was a fight he thought he could win - presumably because he feels the majority of Bahamians are on his side. This is not the only way in which Pastor Bethel and the rest of the Christian Council are strategic in their choice of battles - they also choose only to attack issues which threaten their privileged position as self-appointed moral arbiters of the nation.

This is why domestic abuse, crime, violence, infidelity and a host of other problems this country faces are not on their most wanted list - everyone agrees these are social evils. Instead, they choose to rail against sexual orientation, gambling and "immoral" films, as these fall into the category of things they could formerly control, but which an increasing number of Bahamians feel are private affairs.

Lyall Bethel and his colleagues would pretend that in policing perceived "immoral activities", they are merely expressing their right to voice their opinions. But in agitating for stricter anti-gambling laws, urging Bahamians to take a stand against "further infiltration of homosexuality" and attempting to ban certain films from being seen by adults in theatres in the Bahamas, they are pushing for the state to limit the freedom of responsible, intelligent, adult individuals - much like the Sharia law in fundamentalist Islamic societies.

This suggests that they hold a number of assumptions which are incompatible with modern Bahamian society - among them that we are not qualified to make our own moral choices, that we are little more than children and require the enlightened guidance of men of the cloth, and - ironically - that their influence is so weak that they need the law to reinforce their position.

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