Weekly Column

Last week’s column, “Mainstream Christians Must Stand Up to the Religious Right,” caused quite a stir. E-mail flooded into my in-box and there was much online discussion.

“…the number of mainstream Christians fighting the hate campaigns of the religious right is disappointing,” I wrote. “With thousands of churches, millions of members, and a vested interest in fighting back against religious extremism, they have consistently underachieved and failed to reach their potential.”

There were generally four reactions to the column. The first was from non-believers who completely dismissed religious people as loopy and seemed ambivalent to their assistance in fighting the right. The second was from non-religious people who agreed with the column and urged the religious left to stop passively sitting on the sidelines. The third was from people of faith who supported the column and wanted to join the fight for freedom.

“Wayne, next time you need religious progressiv­es to stand with you contact the local Unitarian Universali­st churches. We will be glad to march with you,” wrote one person based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The fourth reaction came from people in denial who defended the deafening silence in too many liberal and mainstream churches, rather than admit their obvious shortcomings.

“Just because they do not call a press conference or take to the streets does not discount the fact that millions of Christians are hearing a message of love and inclusion each week in services,” wrote one person on The Huffington Post.

I agree that these religious leaders should not call a press conference. They should call dozens of press conferences until the media pays attention. And, yes, they should also be in the streets. As someone who organizes and participates in several protests each year, I can attest to the fact that they are often unpleasant and unglamorous. Sometimes it involves waking up at ungodly hours on weekend mornings to march for hours in inclement weather.

Is this reader suggesting that these churchgoers are somehow superior and shouldn’t get their hands dirty? I find it elitist and reprehensible to push the burden of defending this nation’s inclusive values onto a small group of dedicated individuals, when a broad-based movement is what is desperately needed. If we can’t all be activists, at least we can be active. Why shouldn’t we all be out there doing our part, standing up for our beliefs, and speaking out against the zealots that would transform this nation into an unrecognizable beast?

Fortunately, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Here are four examples of mainstream Christians who are leading the way:

• In August, fundamentalist preacher Dr. Michael Brown organized a regimen of red shirted zealots to infiltrate Charlotte’s gay pride event with their self-righteous slogan “God Has A Better Way.” Kathy Baldock of the Christian organization Canyonwalker Connections stood up to the fanatics.

“As we walked and prayed around the perimeter of Pride Charlotte that morning, we did not know we were stepping into more hatred than either of us had ever before faced,” wrote Baldock of the experience.

• Christian writer John Shore offered a perfect example of how mainstream Christians can be a powerful voice: “Jamey Rodemeyer is a 14-year-old kid from Buffalo, NY, who earlier this week, after years of being bullied for being gay, committed suicide,” Shore wrote on his website. “If you’re a Christian who believes that being gay is a morally reprehensible offense against God, then you share a mindset, worldview, and moral structure with the kids who hounded Jamey Rodemeyer, literally, to death. It is your ethos, your convictions, and your theology that informed, supported, and encouraged their cruelty. We Christians who believe that God created gay people as much in His own image as he did straight people are begging you to reconsider your theology — to do nothing more than be open to an alternative, fully credible, scholastically sound interpretation of one or two lines from Paul. How can you be unwilling to do something so simple, when you see the horrible ultimate cost of that refusal?”

• In a CNN interview with Don Lemon, Rev. Jay Bakker, son of televangelists Jim and Tammy, spoke in favor of LGBT rights: “They (fundamentalists) get hung up on a few scriptures that really in my opinion have been taken out of context and they almost let them trump love your neighbor as yourself. It’s really a scary thing.”

• Actress Kristin Chenoweth recently appeared on HLN’s Joy Behar Show. “I am a Christian. I believe in God and I don’t believe He makes mistakes. So, I believe that being gay is not a sin and, in fact, it’s how you are made.”

Clearly, the loving and inclusive rhetoric of some mainstream Christians is fruitful. The million-dollar question is how do we get such voices to multiply and amplify? The decline of the Religious Right depends on faith communities rooted in fairness who pray to a Jesus that stands for justice.

This post can also be read at:

The Huffington Post

The Falls Church News Press

WayneBesen.com

Sometimes, words can kill.

A vocabulary carefully crafted into lethal lies almost always foreshadows fatalities.

In the case of Nazi Germany, the evidence of Hitler’s wicked intentions — from Mein Kampf to the Brown Shirts – was vividly clear. People may have ignored the alarm bells, but no one can say that there were not warnings of the brutality to come.

In 1994, Hutu radio broadcasts that called Tutsis cockroaches helped lead to genocide in Rwanda. Prior to the infamous broadcasts, a newspaper published the Hutu Ten Commandments, which smeared the rival ethnic tribe and included the eerily prescient eighth commandment: “Hutus must stop having mercy on the Tutsis.”

Earlier this month, in Gojra, Pakistan, more than 20,000 rioters torched 100 houses that belonged to Christian families and murdered seven people after a false rumor spread that the town’s Christians had defiled the Koran. Local mullahs enthusiastically furthered this big lie and used it to spark violence.

“We were afraid because the clerics had been railing against us in the mosques,” Riaz Masih, a Christian and retired math teacher whose house was gutted told the New York Times. “They said, ‘Let’s teach them a lesson.’”

The circumstances of these tragedies are vastly disparate in terms of geography, time period and circumstances. However, they illustrate three points:

1) Inflammatory and defamatory words, especially if spoken by religious or political authority figures, can and do lead to violence.

2) There is no shortage of mentally unbalanced people who will sometimes carry out shocking acts, and we should be very careful not to incite them with rhetoric that stokes their paranoia. Like stacks of firewood, these angry individuals go unnoticed until the gasoline is poured and the match is lit.

3) Americans are human beings, just like everyone else. So, the notion that what we say does not matter “because it could never happen here” is jingoistic foolishness.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Dr. Michael Brown, an anti-gay ideologue in Charlotte who brought hundreds of red shirted fundamentalists to that town’s gay pride event. Brown’s mission is to “raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death.”

If you haven’t noticed, the extreme right is getting dangerously delirious. A black president, a Latina on the Supreme Court and gay people gearing up to marry in Iowa has exacerbated this crowd’s feelings of marginalization. (Read More)

(Brown’s ‘Red Shirts’ march toward Charlotte Pride)

Also read at The Huffington Post

By Wayne Besen

On Sunday, The New York Times featured a chilling article on how fundamentalist Christians stalked, harassed and ultimately murdered Wichita abortion provider George Tiller, who they taunted with the nickname, “Tiller the Baby Killer.”

A lone gunman, who used the e-mail name “ServantofMessiah”, shot Tiller while he ushered at Reformation Lutheran Church, where he and his wife were active members. Prior to Tiller’ assassination, the “loving” faithful had put bullets in his arms and bombed his clinic.

Unfortunately, with Tiller’ controversial clinic finally out of business, the lesson for the loony may be that lethal force is more effective than lobbying. In the Times article, Mark Geitzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, expressed this sentiment when he said during a phone conversation, “God has his own way…but you can’t say our prayers weren’t answered.”

Tiller’ death vividly illustrates the danger posed by the violent language and imagery used by fanatics, who believe they are personally entrusted to enforce God’ will. What concerns me is that the aggressive tactics used against abortion providers are slowly seeping into the anti-gay movement.

As the wider culture becomes more accepting, homophobes are growing increasingly frustrated, which has led to bolder and more confrontational actions. Are anti-gay leaders egging on unstable followers to attack gay people or provoking gays to defend themselves so they can manufacture martyrdom and justify retaliation?

At the Dore Alley Fair in San Francisco last weekend, a number of muscular Christians wearing Jesus shirts reportedly tried to march through the event thumping Bibles and waving signs.

In Charlotte, Dr. Michael Brown, (pictured left) the founder of the Coalition of Conscience, organized several hundred followers in red shirts to descend like uninvited locusts on Charlotte Pride last week under the banner, “God Has a Better Way.”

Aside from the pompous name of their demonstration, the protesters confronted gay people and browbeat them with cherry picked Bible verses. Brown’ ostensible reason for marshaling the troops was to introduce Pride attendees to his angry version of God.

But, of course, the notion that gay people in conservative North Carolina needed Brown to educate them about religious fundamentalism was farcical. Indeed, many of the people at Pride had only found personal acceptance after long journeys to reconcile their spirituality and sexuality.

No, Brown was really there to besiege Charlotte’ gay residents with his hostile hordes. His group’ in-your-face presence was designed to disrupt peaceful assembly and make Pride attendees feel guilty and uncomfortable so that they might skip future gay events.

Fortunately, the pious proselytizers were on their best behavior after the militant writings and actions of Brown came under intense scrutiny by local Q-Notes editor Matt Comer. In his research, Comer found that Brown started his FIRE School of Ministry to “raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death.”

In a vacuum, such religious language may be viewed as a relatively benign rhetorical flourish. However, when followers are portrayed as holy warriors in a life and death struggle against a minority group that is falsely accused of working to undermine freedom of religion, the seeds of potential disaster are intentionally being sown.

In advertising his rally, Brown proclaimed that the “hour is urgent” and that Christians must “turn back the tide of homosexual activism.” In a written statement following his intolerance invasion of Pride, Brown wrote, “Enough is enough to the destructive goals of gay activism…we say it stops in Charlotte.”

Most alarming are these charlatans’ deliberate perpetuation of paranoia by trumpeting alleged religious persecution that exists only in their warped minds. For example, in his statement Brown accused gay people of “trying to put Christians in the closet.” And, he capped it off by saying that gay people are “tampering with the foundations of human society.”

Brown tries to cover his tracks by sprinkling his apocalyptic rhetoric with calls for non-violence. Good orators, however, understand the principle of “layering” messages. If in one sentence you speak of violence and in the next of non-violence, the listener will almost always embrace the words that support his or her belief system.

Dr. Brown isn’t na?Øve and surely understands that the GLBT masses will not retreat into the closet unless events conspire to make coming out a blood sport. Short of extreme bullying and brutality he’ll never accomplish his lost cause of “stopping” progress on gay rights in Charlotte.

Brown, of course, doesn’t actually have to make an overt pitch for mayhem. Simply by inciting his flock he is setting the stage for future tragedy. It is time for Brown and his comrades to abort their increasingly hostile and combative tactics before it leads to more wanton death in the name of abundant life.