More sinned against than Sinning

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

Some of you will recognise the title of this poem as taken from Shakespeare's King Lear it appears in my gay-interest blog archives for November 2013. (Any blog archives can be accessed on the right hand side of any post/poem.)

Just because I take my spirituality from nature rather than from religion doesn’t mean I don’t have every respect for those who find their spirituality elsewhere. While I may not believe in a personified God…what’s in a name?

My argument is not with religion but with a predilection for sheer hypocrisy that many of its followers frequently demonstrate by denying LGBT people the right to not only live in peace but also within the parameters of whatever religion they choose to follow. As I have said many times…take the humanity out of religion and all you have is a dogma and ritual that are precious little more than ornamental.

In a Channel 4 Despatches program about the persecution of gay people in many parts of Africa, one interviewee made the important point that it was not  homosexuality but homophobia the West brought to Africa. I agree. In particular, Christian fundamentalism has a lot to answer for.

A reader of African origin (he doesn’t say where) sent in a tragic tale on which I have based this poem, written for those gay people across the world still persecuted by socio-cultural-religious bigots who claim to speak with this ‘higher authority’ or that. 

Tragically, many followers of religion put their leaders on a pedestal, accepting their bigotry as gospel. Thankfully, though, there are many others with open hearts and minds that know better. 

It has to be said too, of course, that there are many religious minded people who find in their own religion such guidance and strength as encourages them to reach out to others in a spirit of empathy and reconciliation whatever their differences. I feel fortunate to have met and been supported by many such people at various stages in my life; people who recognise that we are a common if diverse humanity whose differences make us less different than simply human.

MORE SINNED AGAINST THAN SINNING 

We kept our secret for years;

no one guessed we were lovers

till one day someone

walked in on us, discovered us

making love, as people do;

hours later, someone set fire

to our home, thinking

we cowered fearfully inside

but already we had found

a place to hide, yet knew we’d be

tracked down, only a matter

of time before human decency lost

and religious bigotry won

Why should we be on the run,

who had done no harm to anyone,

lovers who just happen

to be two men, forced to live

on borrowed time in a community

corrupted by religious bigotry?

Spawn of the Devil they call us,

so-called Christians who, in their turn,

can but call on Leviticus,

conveniently forgetting how Jesus

came to bring Light,

to the world, not Terror serving

some darker power

No hungrier for power than those

who see themselves as better than us

who simply get on with our lives,

discovering in our love for each other

a dream that lasts forever;

no lonelier, in reality, than the teacher

tortured by self-delusion,

hell bent upon turning even the stuff

of religious conviction

into tragic illusion for having chosen

to side with its destruction…

until a sleeplessness that lasts forever

in the grip of Earth Mother

Copyright R. N. Taber 2012; 2016

[Note: This poem first appears under the title 'No Case to Answer' in Tracking the Torchbearer 
by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]