Gay-Bashing in Queens Reminds Us How Far We Still Have to Go.
My friend, Rev. Dr. Mel White (Soulforce.org), has been talking for 10 years about the connection between anti-gay preaching and anti-gay violence. It's hard to imagine a more direct demonstration than Marcel Gelmy's tattoo, caught on camera by the local news as he defends his friend, one of the two men who gay bashed 49 year-old Jack Price.
The tattoo quotes Leviticus 18:22, saying, "You shall not lie with a male as one does with a woman. It is an abomination." The man claims the attack was not an anti-gay hate crime but was justified because, he claims, Price hit on his attackers before the "beatdown" that sent Price to the hospital in a coma with a fractured jaw, rib fractures, collapsed lungs and a lacerated spleen.
You can watch video of the brutal attack here.
THIS is what it comes down to: religious leaders preach an idiotic misinterpretation of the Bible and people believe them and behave accordingly - with violence and discrimination.
I pledge to spread the TRUTH - the Good News, if you will - about What the Bible Says, and Doesn't Say, About Homosexuality, and that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer questioning people are sacred, loved and whole, just as they are. That's part of what MyOutSpirit.com is FOR.
At last week's National Equality March, hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people demanded "equal protection for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in all matters governed by civil law in all 50 states." And that kind of top-down change will be an enormous help.
At the same time, creating long-term, deep-rooted change in our culture, particularly in conservative Christian communities, requires a completely different kind of activism.
No law would have prevented the savage beating of Jack Price.
But the far-sighted activism of Soulforce, Empowering Spirits Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee LGBT Issues Program and its Faith Action Network, PFLAG, and others, will help prevent such violence in the future by changing how people think right now.
thank you ko, and may God bless you and your ministry.
Posted by: pennyjane | October 19, 2009 at 08:25 PM
Shocking - Horrific news - they deserve the full punch of the law right were it hurts...
Posted by: Paul Rathbone | October 20, 2009 at 01:25 AM
People use religion to justify their wrongful doings, as if it were okay to harm someone else. It hurts because as christian myself, they give god a bad name. God doesn't hate people, people hate people as you can see...
Posted by: P0KZT3R | November 14, 2009 at 07:27 PM
Obviously this idiot didn't read Leviticus 19 where the prohibition against tattoos is to be found.
Posted by: Scott Amundsen | February 18, 2011 at 06:30 PM