Miss Popularity

You know my square peg round hole post from a while ago?  Well someone read it and accused me of wanting to be liked.  Of taking the easy way out and not making a stand.  They mentioned that they were the brave and courageous ones by making a stand against homosexuality.  Now this mention is not to bash them at all just in case such a statement might evoke such a feeling.  They are entitled to their opinion which I respect but here’s the thing.  I AM taking a stand.  I just happen to be on the other side.  I am not half-half in the middle.    I believe that gay people, black people, old people, Asian people, disabled people, people people, should all be treated the same and afforded the same rights, responsibilities, privileges.  These include the right to marry who they wish to, live where they want to and work where they want to.   It includes the right to have their children whether by adoption, surrogacy, IVF , au natural etc. My name will not be added to a petition to prevent any person a basic right such as the choice to marry their partner.   

    

Live in your space, do no harm and allow others to live in their own space.  You do not have to agree with someone else’s life style choice but you do have to recognize that everyone deserves the right to be treated in a dignified and fair manner.  SURELY?!     And also, forget your right or wrong thing for a moment here, we cannot condone hate speech or intolerance towards any people group.  How can that be Godly?    Be secure enough in your own identity to not be threatened by anyone else who is different to you.  You probably think I am a closet lesbo or something that I feel so passionately about this.  I know if you see me in my hiking gear your gaydar will beep beep incessantly.  But no, no lesbo tendencies here, not even a single gay person in our family.    I guess it’s growing up in South Africa and seeing first-hand how the majority of people were treated here.    That old lingering white guilt that still emerges when I see how people still live and earn in our country.   Living in a dusty sh*thole  in a tin shack that is freezing in winter and boiling in summer.    A place where kids are not safe, drugs are rife and statistically, our girls have more chance of being raped in SA than of getting a tertiary education.   I know things have changed a little, but unfortunately we have corrupt politicians who ensure their voters are ignorant and poor and uneducated which means they get to stay in power by a fake and shallow democracy.   Running Bosom Buddies and seeing how poor these moms still were, how badly they were treated in our ill equipped hospitals, it was tough, it IS tough.

So do I want to be liked?  Sure, we all do.   Am I choosing to support gay rights because it’s trendy or cool or would make me popular?  No, it’s because of who I am as a person, a Christian and as a South African.   Who I am as a Social Work student.  I need to be true to myself and I need all of God’s people to know how loved and cherished they are.   How worthy and wonderfully created they are.    God uses all of us, even me who has it so not figured out but who will hopefully introduce a side of Jesus that they would never normally have encountered.

PS:  I remember someone calling me a kaffirboetie way back in the eighties.  For my US readers it means nigger-lover.   Sorry to use the N word and K word but our word for nigger was kaffir.  It’s disgusting.  

PPS:   I read this wonderful article by our very own Tutu, a great man of God who shares my views.  Take a minute have a read even if you are totally anti-gay.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/desmond-tutu/religion-homosexuality_b_874804.html