Date: 20 July 1993 From: era@csn.org (Ed Arnold) Subject: Why I Am a Member of Citizens Project X-Copyright: Copyright (c) 1993 by Edward R. Arnold. This material may be freely copied and distributed for noncommercial purposes provided that this notice remains intact. Commercial use of this material requires prior written permission from the author. X-Disclaimer: THIS MATERIAL DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF CITIZENS PROJECT. IT IS PROVIDED SOLELY AS A SERVICE TO OUR PARTICIPANTS. ABEL WAS ELECTED JEZEBEL IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE BILL CLINTON IS THE SPIRIT OF THE ANTI-CHRIST Early one recent Saturday, while returning from a Citizens Project meeting in Colorado Springs, I decided to visit my bed-ridden aunt at the intermediate-care facility where she lives. Pulling into the parking lot, I was immediately confronted with the vicious words above, plastered across the back of a pick-up truck. Being a strong believer in synchronicity, I immediately knew that I needed to enumerate the reasons that I am a member of Citizens Project, in spite of the fact that I live 100 miles from the Springs. My personal spiritual change - and increasingly vocal attitude about social attitudes, particularly discrimination - began one dark morning in 1983. My only daughter, Johanna, was asphyxiated by an MD in an incident of incompetence and negligence which I can only describe as surrealistic, given its improbability. Today, Johanna is a quadriplegic who also bears the labels "non-verbal" and "legally-blind". This experience, which people tend to refer to as "terrible" or "unfortunate", has taught me what "morality" and "love" mean, in a way few people experience. In particular, learning to care for a quad has greatly accentuated the typically female (nurturing) parts of my personality ... what the Jungian theorist usually refers to as the "anima." The intervening years have been filled with experiences ranging from incredible bitterness/resentment, to the unbelievably beautiful. After watching an authority figure trash my little girl's future, and then tell lies to extract himself from the mess he created, it was a long climb back to my present position: still rarely trusting authority (secular or religious), and just beginning to trust some people again - particularly, males who are doctors, lawyers, or ministers. By the time 1991 rolled around, I had been in the initial stages of major depression for three years. Early one morning in July 1991, I experienced a dream which bore the unmistakable hand of God: I dreamt that a friend from work told me he was infected with HIV ... which meant, of course, that he was probably gay, something I had no reason to suspect. I fearfully confronted him with this dream a month later, only to learn that it was true. At that point, I had no choice but to do what God guided me to do in the dream: I put my arms around him, hugged him to me, and showed him how I felt by breaking into a full cry, something I had not done since the age of 10. Since that time, he has become a favorite friend, as well as a favorite of my spouse, Jacqueline. Although this is not the only experience I have had in my life which was clearly spiritual, it certainly stressed to me that the personal relationship with God which people like Will Perkins claim is available only through the Bible, is available to all of us; and moreover, what God "says" to us can be in direct conflict with the Bible, at which point one loses any desire to rationalize the many odd and even hateful things found in the Bible. First Johanna, and now Sean, have guided my learning process. Through them and the books and people who have come to me because of them, I have developed a strong personal spirituality. and learned to recognize the signs of spiritual impoverishment that characterize the hard-core Christian Reconstructionist/Fundamentalist movement. Some of them are: o The idea that lying is ever permissible for a true Christian, that the end justifies the means: Soon after the campaign for Amendment 2 had ended in success, with endless statements by CFV about their campaign being against "special rights", the truth began to come out. In letter after letter in my local paper, CFV members quoted the Bible to justify their vote for Amendment 2. Finally, in an article published in the Denver Post Magazine on 21 March 1993 about Will Perkins, Perkins freely admitted to the Post reporter that supporters of Amendment 2 want to discriminate against homosexuals, even in public accommodations, pure and simple. o The myth of Biblical literalism, that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God: The Bible is a book filled with half-truths, un-truths, and a few outright lies. I didn't have to learn that from Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" (although his arguments are quite convincing); all I had to do was read Leviticus 21:16. These verses state that no man who has any physical defect may present gifts in worship to God; that such people are unworthy to serve Him, and "profane" His sanctuaries. I did not sleep at all on the night after I discovered that passage. I believe what Johanna tells me with her eyes, not an obvious untruth written more than two millenia ago. The real truth of the matter is, those who believe in external authority get their religion from external sources; the truly religious get it from internal sources, and don't flaunt it. o The (ridiculous) idea that homosexuals were going to succeed in passing "pro-homosexual" legislation in communities across Colorado, and the only way to stop this was by a statewide referendum: The fact of the matter is, anti-discrimination ordinances protecting homosexuals had been passed in only 3 communities in Colorado (Aspen, Boulder, and Denver), and the previous failure of such ordinances to pass in communities from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, demonstrated that the fundamentalist community in Colorado was hardly in danger of being surrounded by hordes of lewd, demonstrating homosexuals. The REAL reason CFV put Amendment 2 on the ballot, was to teach the people of Aspen, Boulder, and Denver a lesson: i.e., that the fundamentalist community will not tolerate minority viewpoints (let us not forget the English-only measure), and is ready to exercise the tyranny of a larger (state-wide) majority, to distance themselves from the [shades of fluoride and commies] "pro-homosexual" threat. o The idea that it is now permissible for a small minority of Christians to openly admit the most un-Christian of principles, and even advocate treason against our democratic form of government, invoking "religion" in their defense: Reconstructionists/Fundamentalists in Colorado seem to believe that Amendment 2 gives them free reign not just to exercise their right (and mine) of free speech, but to *flaunt* their biases in rude ways which my mother (and yours, I hope) would never tolerate. Yet, two minor matters reveal the hollowness of their beliefs. First, they continue to apply God's supposed word to matters like homosexuality, while ignoring lies like Leviticus 21:16, and other passages which even go so far as to justify slavery; these passages were used by their "Christian" forebears to oppress and exclude disabled and ethnic minorities, including open genocide against several minority populations in centuries past. Second, the totalitarian concepts they espouse (particularly the Reconstructionist idea of the death penalty for supposed "offenses" like blasphemy, and the idea that democracy is contrary to God's Law and must be abolished) have a great deal more in common with the politics of fascism, than the Christianity in which I was brought up. The only important principle I was taught was that "Thou shalt love the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." o The idea that what amounts to mental illness should be labeled "religion": A couple examples of this will suffice. In stating that they "hate the sin, but love the sinner", Fundamentalists are saying that they believe that everyone else should believe their definition of "sin," even those of other religions. They are also saying that it is possible for a mere mortal to separate a person's BEHAVIOR from the person, although they are inextricably linked, just as the mind and body are inextricably linked. This sort of thing is called psychosis; psychosis is defined as the inability to tell what is real, from what is not real. It is not real to believe that everyone will have the same belief as to what is "sin". It is not real to claim that you are so perfect, that you can separate a person from his behavior. By waving signs such as "GOD HATES FAGS" at their rallies, reconstructionists/fundamentalists are admitting their ignorance of possibly the most spiritual man of the 20th century, Carl Jung. In his stories about Jungian principles, "Stories for Jung Folk," author Richard Roberts explains the principle of projection: what we say about, and do to, other people demonstrates what our own faults are. Fundamentalists project their own antipathy, fear, and hatred onto God, pretending that God tells them to do this; this is surely one of the ultimate acts of conceit. Their religion is one of blind belief; they are not guided directly by God, as my dream guided me to my friendship with Sean ... a gentle man of sunny disposition who is a delight to be with, and who has a special place in my heart because he will be an advocate for his mentally-retarded little sister so long as he is well enough to do so. o The insistence by members of CFV that they do not hate homosexuals: Perkins' friend, Pastor Bernhard Kuiper, said, "It should be made clear that in order to live a Christian life, any Christian in any society must be able to discriminate, and you must be able to hate, because that's what the Bible says. Hatred in itself is not a bad quality. It's what do you hate? We do not hate people." But they do hate *behavior*, and that means they hate people, because many behaviors (including sexuality) are an innate part of who people are. Pastor Kuiper's words are but another example of typically schizoid "Christian" behavior, whose most grave error through the centuries has been to separate the material from the spiritual (esp. by condemning human sexuality), and in the cited case, to claim that they are capable of totally separating a person's behavior from the person. Realizing the hollowness of Kuiper's words is, for me, deeply rooted in my own experiences. Having watched a man nearly destroy my only daughter in a fit of carelessness and incompetence, and then having had, years later, a string of dreams in which I murdered this man, was a real revelation to me as to the depth of hatred that is needed to take legal or political action against someone. I know for a fact that I feel intense hatred for the man who damaged my daughter (not just for his behavior, but for who he is, that allowed such behavior to happen), and that is what ultimately enabled me to take legal action against him. My experience leads me to believe that hatred must run very deep amongst the members of CFV, for them to take political action against people whom they don't even know. o The idea that AIDS is God's retribution for homosexuality. The idea that any illness, even a sexually-transmitted disease, is God's retribution, has been with us for a long time. Many writers - Susan Sonntag's book "Illness as a Metaphor" comes to mind here - have attempted to dispatch this incredibly punitive idea to the Junkheap of Bad Ideas, where it belongs. If God really behaved this way, then my daughter would not be a quadriplegic; in fact, there would not be a single handicapped child in the world, nor would there be any persons with degenerative diseases like MS, nor would there be any cancer. Yes, Bad Things Happen to Good People, and Good Things Happen to Bad People; and only when we reveal our compassion towards those to whom bad things have happened, is God's love manifested. That's precisely what II Cor. 1:3-4 says: we comfort others with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted. o The ridiculous idea that homosexuals will somehow be "saved" if they will just be celibate. The Christian Right doesn't seem to care that medical research has shown that our sexual side is both a manifestation of, and contributes to, our physical and mental well-being. This principle does not exclude homosexuals. Our love lives bolster the body's immune system and release important chemicals like endorphins, which are particularly important in keeping a proper balance of the major neurotransmitters in the brain. Ask anyone who has been through any form of post-traumatic stress, or through major depression: lack of a sex life can be a major contributor to, and manifestation of, emotional crises. When used responsibly, both heterosexuals and homosexuals receive the important gifts of ecstasy and wholeness which nourish our psyches, keeping us in a positive frame of mind, and hopeful for tomorrow. o The idea that the quality of love between two members of the same sex, is never the same as between two members of opposite sexes, and that homosexuals do not have spiritual lives: I honestly can't figure out where they get these ideas. I have seen many examples to the contrary. Perhaps the most compelling is in the movie "Silverlake Life", in which Mark Massi cares for his lover until he dies of AIDS. Near the conclusion of this movie, Mark Massi remarks that he had never believed there was anything but a void beyond death, until his lover, Tom, visited him some weeks after Tom had died. Returning then, to the lesson I was reminded of by the back of a pickup truck: each time Reconstructionists/Fundamentalists generate fear and hatred amongst my friends in the gay and lesbian population, they are reflecting and replenishing their own fear and hatred. In creating a mini-hell in the here and now, they are revealing what they really are. Pat Robertson, John Rushdoony, Will Perkins, and their friends have become, the thing they profess to fear the most; for the fear, hatred, and divisiveness they generate reveals that they ARE, collectively, the anti-Christ.