PRYDEGUYS.....
"IF you walk in truth. If you live in truth. Fear not, ny brothers and sisters, for God will always hold you in the hollow of his hand."
Prydeguys and all in our community who love: The message to follow was sent to me today. Given the recent passage of Prop 8 making it LAW to hate in California, and our Governator's encouraging words to "hang on and keep up the fight," this message and story metaphor are well considered...
A note below from a friend... followed by a VERY clear metaphor...
Bear
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Here in Canada, marriage equality has now been entrenched for years (to the point where no one, gay or straight, even talks about it anymore). It's a complete non-issue here now. So it was with a particularly sick feeling that I read about the roll-back of human rights that recently occurred in California. It's a good reminder that rights must be constantly fought for, and I can just imagine the battles that our choruses in the States are gearing up for.
Talking to some of my more conservative distant-family members who live in Southern California, I was met with that annoying question "but why do you want to call it marriage? Gays here get all the same rights with civil unions. Why do you have to change an ancient tradition? It's not in the Bible."
We all know the basic arguments for this, starting with the fact that the 'ancient tradition' also includes no divorce, no cross-faith or cross-race marriages, etc. The basic definition of marriage has been changed very often in recent history. But these arguments don't seem to work, I think because we're meeting emotion with logic. It's hard to overcome the internal 'ick' factor for many people. So I wrote this short fable, to perhaps help people to understand how we *feel*. Feel free to use it yourself, if you think it is of any value.
-john
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A Fable About Equality
One day, the Catholics of the world realized that they far outnumbered all the other kinds of Christians.
"Look," they said "There's over 1.1 billion of us. There's only 16 million Southern Baptists, 12 million Mormons, 5 million Lutherans... Let's use our numbers to change some things."
So they used their voting power and passed laws all over. These laws said that only Catholics were allowed to call themselves 'Christians'. Only the Catholic Bible could call itself 'the Bible'. And only Catholics could refer to Jesus by that name. The law required all the other Churches to use different, more generic names. This law was appropriately called the 'Defense of Christianity Act'.
Of course, this was met with outrage. Non-Catholic Christians around the world rose up in protest, saying "How dare you! We worship the same God, and our Churches are just as good as yours, if not better! We won't be treated as second-class Christians!"
And the Catholics responded, "But you're not really Christians at all, don't you see? We have a tradition that goes back more than 2000 years unbroken right to Jesus. We're the real Christians. You guys have only been around for a few hundred years, and you're changing our ancient traditions. You even took some books out of the Old Testament of the Bible! You rip apart the Bible and expect people to call you Christian. You make Jesus sick."
The others said "But what does this have to do with you? It doesn't affect your lives. You don't have to read our Bible or come to our Churches. Our worship has nothing to do with you!"
The Catholics said "Of course it does. When you call yourselves 'Christian', it cheapens the word 'Christian', and that takes away from us. Why, if you have equal access to the word 'Christianity', then our schools will be forced to tell children that it's just as good to be a Baptist or a Lutheran as a Catholic!"
The others replied "But we ARE Christians! We follow the teachings of Jesus! How is that any different than you?"
The Catholics smiled sadly and shook their heads. "Christ intended there to be one holy apostolic Church, which He Himself founded on Saint Peter. It's in the Bible. What you have is just not the same. Besides --- what's wrong with the term 'Middle-Eastern Special Carpenter Followers'? You can still have your 'Official Religious Storybook', just don't call it 'the Bible'. You get all the same rights as we do. Oh, and by the way --- since your marriages aren't performed in a real Christian church, we're dissolving those, too. You'll have to settle for a civil union."
The others said "That's discrimination! You can't treat us differently just because we have a different religion!"
The Catholics said "Don't be silly. You have exactly the same rights we do. Just like any person, you have the right to be Baptized Catholic, so that you call call yourselves Christians and get married. See how it all works? Now stop complaining, or we'll pass a law against that." Then the Catholics looked at each other and smiled. "Isn't it nice to outnumber minorities?" they said to each other.
And they all lived together in their new 'equality'.
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