Saturday, September 24, 2005

In the beginning

Soooooo…..Where shall we start? There is so much choice on the menu, when deciding to discuss the conflict between Christians opposed to homosexuality and gay rights proponents. Should we start with Hurricane Katrina, and the allegations that homosexuals committing the sins of Sodom were the provocation that incurred God’s Wrath? This is now relatively old news, and most people are wise to the fact that to claim such a thing would be to sidestep issues around global warming (simplistically, the warmer the sea, the bigger the hurricane, and the seas were the warmest they’ve been for a long time), that George Bush canned improvements to the levys that might have saved New Orleans from such devastating destruction depite warnings of the potentially severe consequences for doing so – what a false economy that turned out to be), and that the disaster planning and recovery operation was managed by a guy who appeared to be in place because of political back-scratching rather than skill and experience.

Should I explain just how I came to feel this topic was important enough to commit time to writing it? It’s a long and painful story, and would probably be too much about me and people in my life for you to stomach in one go. I’m sure bits of mine and others’ stories will pop up when appropriate. Or perhaps I should start with a little background in the long-standing historical antipathy towards gay people by Christianity? Well, this is intended to be a looking-forward commentary rather than excessively focussed on the past, although inevitably bits of the past will creep in as current events unfold. After all, it isn’t just that people who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it, a more pertinent version for this topic is that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to become even more victims of the same patterns in human society. But too much history in one go…..No, let’s focus on the present and the future.

Where are we going?
But before we look at current events, first let me briefly explain what I hope to accomplish with this blog. My thoughts are with people who are gay or bisexual, or have otherwise ‘non-standard’ sexuality and/or gender identity, and feel either oppressed by a predominantly homophobic Christian cultural environment; or that their own sexuality is in conflict with their Christian beliefs that expressing their sexuality is sinful in the eyes of God, and are struggling to reconcile the two.

Well, I hope that what I can offer you is inciteful commentary on world events and relevant news that will be both a help and reassurance to you. I hope you find my perspectives of value. Please let me know if that is the case or not. I’m only doing this because I think I can spot what’s really going on in a way that others don’t always notice, and I want to make a difference to people’s quality of life, so it’s important to me that I know whether what I’m doing is of any value to anyone or not. If there are relevant news events that you think I may not know about or news feeds that reliably bring up the subject in your part of the world, please let me know about them.

This will be all for now – comments on current events coming soon. Mike Hersee