Gay People Go To Heaven Too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Now, as regular readers will know only too well, I am not a religious person and subscribe to no religion. Moreover, I turned my back on religion and put my faith in nature long before I acknowledged, even to myself, that I am gay. Even so, I cannot believe that any God would condemn a person for his or her sexuality or deny them entry to any heaven; it goes against the very spirit of religion and its humanity.

Take the humanity out of religion and what you have left is not worth having.  

Oh, I know many religious minded people will disagree, especially those Christians who choose to take their so-called humanity from the New Testament and their justification of bigotry, intolerance and even hate from the Old Testament. I do know my Bible and the God of the Old Testament bears little resemblance to the God of whom Jesus Christ speaks. How some evangelical Christians can use a few lines from Leviticus to justify their persecution of gay people is beyond me; they are a disgrace to their religion.

Yes, I have said all this before, and dare say will say it again. So why do I keep repeating myself?  It is because I see red every time a gay person gets in touch to tell me how they feel tormented not by their sexuality as such but by feeling must make choice between it and their religion. Bollocks to that! The two are not incompatible as many, many religious minded people have shown me over the years.

It is sickening how many so-called ‘religious’ people, especially certain clerics, among all the world religions, use religion as a weapon with which to threaten people and scare them into denying their sexual identity.

I am so glad I chose nature that gives me everything I was told as a child that religion offers but which I never found.  I was raised a Christian, but at school Religious Education looked at all the world religions. Religion offered me no peace of mind, no sanctuary from the various psychological (never physical) torments I had to endure at home and school. It was nature that sustained me during long, dark years as a troubled teenager coming to terms with his sexuality. Imagine how much greater that torment would have been had I been faced with being ostracised not only by the less enlightened among the heterosexual majority, but also by my religion for being gay. In that, though, I realise now I would have been mistaken.

It is not religion that hounds gay people, only certain, ignorant people. Even so, I have never been tempted back into any religious fold nor ever will be.  Yet, I say again, thank goodness for those more enlightened human beings not only among the heterosexual majority, but also among those people who take their humanity from their religion; where the latter is in no way compromised by acts of humanity that do not discriminate between people for their colour, creed, sex or sexuality.

This poem has not appeared on the blog since 2010 and is here today especially for a young man who wrote anonymously to share his pain at being unable to decide whether to be openly gay ‘for the sake of my sanity’ or  to ‘keep quiet for the sake of my family, friends, and religion.’ 

Are we really living in the 21^st century?

GAY PEOPLE GO TO HEAVEN TOO

A mischievous spirit once asked to see

the golden rule said to be set in stone

that gay men and women should not be

admitted to the ranks of heaven’s own

A religious leader, just passed away,

retorted it was plain commonsense;

others agreed, faith must win the day

(besides, gay people cause offence)

They all began arguing at Heaven’s door,

gay protest drowned out by the noise;

Whose religion means to God the more?

True, no easy choice…

No one noticed for all the brave conjecture

that an angel had opened the door,

but only the gay crowd hastened to enter,

the rest were too busy disputing the score

The mischievous spirit, too, slipped back in,

though not one pious soul saw it had gone;

that no room for bigotry in heaven, a lesson

in Holy Books some readers never learn

[From: On The Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]