I was well off the tourist trail, heading to Kenya through the bottom of Ethiopia, when a young Ethiopian lawyer sat down next to me on the bus. I hadn’t spoken English to anyone for a few days, so I was happy for the conversation.
We covered a lot of ground and quickly realized we had similar ideas on life, politics, and even religion. (One of the nice things about people in developing countries is that they don’t waste time with small talk.)
After a short break in the conversation, he turned to me, and with a tone that let me know he really meant it, said,
“There is one thing I find disgusting about western people.” I raised my eyebrows, and he continued, “They love gay people.”
I knew this was coming. There is widespread contempt for homosexuality in Ethiopia and in Africa in general, and they really resent the West’s efforts to promote tolerance.
I asked him why, and got the usual responses.
The first response is always that there will be no more people if being gay becomes accepted, to which I always laugh, “So, you will turn gay if they make homosexuality legal?”
He knew that was a stupid argument and quickly dug deeper, using the Bible for firepower.
This is a trickier rebuttal, the Bible does say fairly explicitly that sex between two men is a sin, once in the old testament and twice in the new. The fact that it condemns adultery hundreds of times does not change this. It does, however, beg the question,
Why do you call homosexuality disgusting, but not adultery?
My lawyer friend as well as the other Africans I had this conversation with had an answer for this. They said that it was disgusting. In fact they would go as far as to say that it was specifically male on male sex that disgusted them, female sex was okay. This was the consensus even when I talked with women.
The honestly in this response is shocking to us in the ultra-politically correct West, but I would argue that this kind of honesty is necessary to move any conversation forward (you should have heard the answers I got from people when I asked them why Africa was so poor – but that is a story for another day.)
So, being honest, for me there is something disconcerting about the idea of two men having sex. You can call it homophobia, you can call it an evolutionary tick, you can call it a cultural inheritance, you can call it whatever you want, all I know is that I don’t want to think about it.
I feel like a lot of people are in the same boat as me when it comes to this feeling, and I think that owning up to it as our personal problem can help save us from the grave sin of using God for cover.
I think that if the church admitted this, they would see how they have managed to turn a blind eye to the incredible divorce rate in the church while vocally condemning homosexuality.
I think people would see that politicians are using a feeling, not the Bible, to get votes. Otherwise, why aren’t they trying to whip up a frenzy of alcoholic haters to vote for them (again a sin that is mentioned way more than same-sex sex).
This past weekend tens of thousands of people showed up to an anti-gay protest in Italy. I would like to see how many Italians would show up in support of a law that outlawed intoxication!
There is another even more important thing we can learn by admitting that there is a personal feeling driving the hateful persecution of homosexuals. It is that Christians are not the only ones with these feelings.
What this means is that it is not easy to be gay. What this means is that they could really use some love. What this means is that once again the church is failing miserably at what it was called to do. Not judge – Love.
For once in history it would be nice to get this right.
Stop quoting scripture at me, for every verse you quote I will bury you in verses on love, and not verses on weird judgy love, just straight up unconditional love.
When we feel okay with hanging our personal baggage on Jesus’ shoulders and hating the very people he loved, we condemn ourselves.
Let’s get this right. Open your arms, deny yourself, admit you don’t have the answers, and welcome everyone, for the sake of Love.
–Picture is from the bus in southern Ethiopia–
Leave a Reply