Love Versus the Sword
You can not love someone when you have a gavel in one hand and a sword in another. This is a phrase that has been repeating over and over in my head for weeks now. The vile language and attitudes that seem to be streaming from the religious right make it extremely difficult for me to think about much else.
Anti-LGBT rhetoric is nothing new. We have heard it time and time again and it has been the cause of some of the worst hurt poured out on the LGBT community in recorded history.
Minister of Hate, Steve Anderson
This last week, the pastor of a small store front Arizona church become the latest in a long line of Christians to spill out vile hatred and fall far short of the message that should be heard from the pulpit.
Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Az. preached a sermon and asked his congregation and Facebook followers to spread his message and call to “kill all the gays.”
As much as it turned my stomach, I sat down and watched the video that went online on December 1. As a Christian myself, I was appalled as I listened to what was coming from someone who is suppose to model the attributes of Christ himself. The lack of respect, for one, is far from any example that Christ portrayed while he walked this Earth, or what is written in the word of God that he left with us. The use of words like “homo,” “faggot,” and “reprobate” would never be on the lips of Christ. For someone to preach from the pulpit to “execute the homos like God recommends” is at the opposite of the spectrum from the love of the New Covenant that Christ preached. It is one thing to preach on being personally accountable for one’s own sins (and I am sure this preacher has his own to contend with), but to preach murder? You cannot love someone when you have a gavel in one hand and a sword in another.
As many of us are too keenly aware, Anderson is hardly alone in his misrepresentation of Christianity and the purveyors of hurt and hate upon the LGBT community, or anyone else for that matter who fall outside of a narrow minded perception of God’s children. According to Gordon Klingenschmitt, newly elected to the Colorado House of Representative District 15 and former Navy chaplain, “The ultimate hate speech is to endorse homosexuality.”
Klingenschmitt
Klingenschmitt has also said, “only people who are going to heaven are entitled to equal treatment by the government,” and “teaching kids about gay marriage is mental rape.”
Pat Robertson, a long time anti-LGBT preacher, claimed that Jesus wouldn’t serve same-sex couples because they should be put to death instead.
You can’t love someone when you have a gavel in one hand and a sword in the other.
Not only is the community at large targeted for hated, but individuals, including myself, have been personally attacked and slandered. No person should be used as a personal verbal punching bag to prove an ideologically flawed idea. Klingenschmitt, in an email earlier this year wrote, “Democrats like [Jared] Polis (an openly gay man) want to bankrupt Christians who refuse to worship and endorse his sodomy. Next he’ll join ISIS in beheading Christians, but not just in Syria, right here in America.” Klingenschmitt later gave a less than authentic apology after being pressured by both the Democratic and the Republican party, but his beliefs still ring throughout his statements since.
What all these people have forgotten is that Christ himself called us to love one another. He didn’t put conditions on it. He didn’t say only love those that think and act like you. He said love one another, oh and let’s not forget this tidbit found in the book of Matthew, Chapter 7 starting in verse 1: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
You can not love someone when you hold a gavel in one hand and a sword in the other.
Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion, Transgender Politics
About the Author (Author Profile)
Meggan Sommerville is a writer, photographer, indefatigable advocate for trans women’s rights and the founder of Trans Girl at the Cross, a Christian ministry focused on building bridges between the trans community and the Church. Meggan holds the honor of being the first transgender woman to be cast in Listen to Your Mother, a production of mother-themed readings currently directed and performed in 32 cities around the United States. Meggan is a proud mom of two teenagers.Subscribe
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It is sad whenever anyone pushes hate but when someone clothes themselves in the patina of religion it is even sadder. I noted that ‘so called’ preacher Anderson had, at best, a storefront church. Small mind with a small congregation. It is also of concern when so called preachers such as Rev. Wright (“God Damm America”) or Rev. Al who have the ear of the highest government officials spread hate and stir up the flames of discontent.
I have been in many churches, temples, etc. and I have never heard any man or woman of the cloth speak of hate or murder. I have a close relative who has been ordained as a Catholic Deacon who has adopted as his special mission work to create an atmosphere of love and welcome in the Catholic Church for members of the LGBT community.
While we should not turn a deaf ear to the purveyors of hate we should work to encourage the propagation of the judeo christian principles upon which our country was founded.
Pat
I should preface this by pointing out that I am an atheist. As a nurse I have worked in hospitals owned by and run by Catholic nuns. I have no axe to grind about religion
It never ceases to amaze me that the people who preach loudest about loving Jesus, ‘meek and mild’ are often the ones who come out with the vilest, most violent rhetoric ever heard. Who gave them the right to declare what Jesus might have said or done? How did they get the ‘inside’ knowledge of his preferences and attitude?
Over the years there has been the most amazing, most disgusting things done in God’s name. It’s amazing how a person can balance a belief in someone who said the meek shall inherit the earth yet be anything but meek themselves.