Picture this. You're sitting in a crowded cafeteria, surrounded by your classmates (or, "colleagues," as your professors would say) enjoying your lunch. While the program for the first musical of the season is being passed around the table, a few people make a comment or two about how many Bible verses certain cast members used in their bios. Coincidentally, a trio of self-acknowledged Christians sit directly to your right, all three of whom you would consider your friends, or at the very least, your acquaintances.
You immediately recognize the conflict that might possibly arise, so you take what you think to be a preemptive strike by turning to your staunchly Christian friend who is sitting to your right and saying, "No offense. You know that Christianity is just an easy target here."
Only to have her retort, "So are gay people."
You feel a rush of blood flush your cheeks very briefly. You are stunned at not so much what she said but how she said it, almost like she was so offended and quietly outraged that she felt the need to degrade a particular demographic which, if you will recall, had no hand in the aforementioned comments made about the Bible verse bios.
Okay, I get it, I get it. She's mad because she's a straight Christian female at a very liberal college, no less a home to a centralized community of gays than a Joyce Meyer conference is a beehive of activity for charismatic Christians. She's also mad because she probably feels like she can't voice her honest opinions without fear of being criticized by the cloud of liberal minds that surround her every single day. How frustrating it must be to finally know what it feels like to be marginalized.
Anyway. This little incident brings to light a much larger issue that I struggled with all through high school: How does homosexuality fit into Christianity? Or does it fit at all? It's a question I think a lot of Christians feel the need to finally deal with now that being gay is no longer considered "sinful" or "wrong" in the eyes of mainstream culture.
I don't think many people at my school know how much I love God. Perhaps it's because I don't generally talk about God to people in everyday conversations. Perhaps it's because I don't tell many people that my best friend and I went to church together for five years in high school without being told to by our parents. Perhaps it's because I don't quote Bible verses, not that there's anything wrong with that. Perhaps the simple fact that I'm recognizably gay to most people automatically turns off the God switch in their brains. ("Oh, he's gay. He probably has beef with Christianity.") From my experience, a good number of people understand gays in very simple terms, as either one extreme or the other. You're either a flaming queer who spouts his or her beliefs just as self-righteously as any Westboro Baptist or a closet case who is too scared to believe in or defend anything.
The truth is, there are gay Christians and there are straight atheists, just like there are gay Republicans and straight Democrats. What is it about our culture that drives us to force labels on everything and everyone? Are sweeping generalizations and outdated stereotypes really the only way we have of understanding each other? I think we'd all agree that the answer to that question is no.
Today in my music history class, we discussed gender roles in Europe's Renaissance period. Our teacher asked the class where we thought the idea of assigning gender roles to music might have come from. A stream of answers followed, but the topic itself left more unanswered questions in my mind than anything. What is gender? Or, more importantly, why is gender?
In our search for answers to such questions, I think the most important thing to remember amidst the confusion is our humanity. What makes us human, in my opinion, is not our ability to communicate or feel compassionate, but rather our ability to retain that sense of mutual respect amongst each other, knowing that no one's ideas are any more or less valid than anyone else's. Deep down, I think we all know we're all eventually going to die and none of this will even matter once we've been sucked back up into the unfathomable and all-encompassing living breath of the Universe.
But who am I to make such assumptions?
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