When The Intolerant Kill Christmas

[HendryTan]

This article was published in a US newspaper on Christmas Eve, the author is a political commentator. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemon...l-_b_78201.html

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When the Intolerant Kill Christmas: My Gay Friend's Holiday Story

A very close friend of mine "just came out" to his brother as a gay man. He did the same with his mother about ten months ago -- and it didn't go well. . .with either of them.

He's a former soldier who worked on some of the most classified missions the military had going -- and despite my criticism of the Bush administration on its invasion of Iraq, I know that my friend had a hand in successfully delivering some of the world's real bad guys to the next world -- both in Afghanistan and Iraq. He reads my blog -- and he has kept an open mind about some of my criticisms of this administration and the national security course it has been on.

But his mother and brother have tried to tell him that if he's gay -- he must not believe in God, he must be a reprobate and must be such a deviant that his brother told him that he will never give him a moment's rest and peace about this issue.

My friend is earnest, a patriot, sober, sane -- and he's being betrayed in America by a lack of the kind of tolerance and modernity that our society is supposed to be about. Iran and any place under the control of the Taliban hang, stone, or castrate gay youth. Egypt imprisons them. In middle America, the intolerant who somehow have decided to channel a vindictive, judgmental, and sin-obsessed Christ harass, disown -- and in the case of young Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming or active duty sailor Allen Schindler -- kill them.

I hate to hold Dick Cheney and his wife out as models, but I'm absolutely going to in this case. Cheney is convinced of how right he is in matters of war and state -- but when it came to family, Cheney and his wife evolved. I know that he does not harass his daughter Mary. He accepts her, her partner, and his grandchild.

This is my personal message to my friend's mother and brother. Your son has options. He has friends and a family he can surround himself with until the end of his days as he is a prince of a person whether you see it through your judgmental eyes or not.

I'm sure when Lynn Cheney was not yet ready to broadcast discussion about her daughter being a lesbian -- she was privately tormented. The fact that her daughter. . .that's right. . .the Vice President of the United States' daughter is homosexual -- took time to accept. But they did it. They remained a family, and I credit them for privately demonstrating tolerance in a way that should influence the most theocratic corners of the nation. I have friends that argue that Mary Cheney hasn't done enough -- but she and her family are one -- and that's enough in my view. And it should be in the case of my friend's family.

Your views about your brother and son can't even be called Medieval -- because as we have recently learned, Medieval knights, lords, and nobility committed themselves to each other in property and love in much the way that civil unions are emerging today.

You think your brother and son "chose" a lifestyle that he has tried not to accept for years -- to the point of considering ending his life.

He made no choice. But you are.

You are choosing to reject him and who he decides to be. If Cheney accepts his daughter and her partner, you should think about why you refuse to do the same. Why aren't you able to join our modern world? Theocracy -- when it harms rather then helps -- is no better here than it is over there.

Merry Christmas, and if you get a chance during your lives to visit the site where Matthew Shepherd was brutally killed, I want you to think real hard about who is saved and who is not.

By the way, I forgive you -- but your son is going to live a good life whether or not you accept him for the great man he is.

I hope that something in this note may be useful to many of the others emotionally abandoned or victimized by a righteousness that has lost its bearings.

-- Steve Clemons

[oralb]

tks Hendry, for reminding that we still have a long way to go...

here's a summary on what happened to Matthew Shepard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard

[Guest haha]

mathew could probably be so happy that he was going to have 2 dudes to fxxk him so went out with them only to be murdered. probably lust and sex killed him.

even a prositute can die on the hand of a physco

[oralb]

... and you think that's funny?

quoting from hendry's title, not only intolerant like you kills christmas, you pretty much kill everyone

[GachiMuchi]

A man's life was lost because of some idiots and here you are cracking jokes about his death?

What kind of person can be so cold, insensitive and devoid of feeling for another human being to say such things.

I really wish you experience what Matthew gone through for yourself.

[doncoin]

My flat mate is from the South (Kentucky) and as he told me about his Southern Baptist relatives, there is no point explaining to them about being gay or different. to them anything that does not conform to their way of thinking and beliefs is as good as being dead to them.

An example he shared was his family physician who looked after the family for years and was there through his grandmother's 2 hip replacement surgeries etc. All she could say about him is that he is going to burn in hell because he does not believe in Jesus after all the good the man has done to her family and herself.

Any form of extreme fundamentalism is bad.

Many times fundamentalists twist the context of the Bible or other sacred texts to suit their own purposes- political or whatever if you were to examine it carefully. It is important for people to know, in the case of being Christian for example, to know the Bible well so that you can spot a lunatic from a mile off.

[Guest artemov]

Aiyoh.

Its obviously haha is an attention seeker lah. Why bother replying?

Its like giving bukkake to a cum slut

[Tight Ass]

I thought i was a weirdo until i read the first gay book written about peculiar chris. Since then, i knew I wasn't alone and now i know there are many people like me scattered in every part of this planet. That is something consoling and i precious my identity even more. I have no regrete being borned gay but the people surrounding us, the thing we heard and saw make me feeling lonely most of the time irregardless of how strong i was. If someday i can become an angel, i will make everyone have a lover so that they will not become lonely as me...but must wait until TA die first ok..