I've
never watched an episode of Duck Dynasty. I'm clearly not its target
demographic. So, when I first heard that Phil Robertson, the patriarch
of the family showcased in the show, had made remarks to GQ magazine declaring homosexuality a sin
and quoting scripture to justify those remarks, I literally thought,
"Who the hell cares what that guy thinks?" (If you follow me on
Facebook or Twitter, you know I posted a statement to that affect.) Robertson also remarked in the same article that African Americans he knew before the Civil Rights era had no complaints and a video has surfaced where he told young men at a church retreat to make sure and marry girls when they are 15 or 16 before they get older and go after your money, so considering the source of the anti-gay remarks I figured any sane person wouldn't care.
Given
that thousands of people protested A&E's decision to put Robertson
on suspension, and the network eventually reinstated him to the TV show,
I guess a lot of people do care and certainly many people in that group
would qualify as sane. If you went out Christmas shopping this year,
you discovered, as I did, that Duck Dynasty is a big deal. I want the
agent these guys have, because they are on everything from coffee mugs to board games to the duck calls that made them rich in the first place. Now they even have their own line of guns. Oh, and Robertson's book sales have soared since the controversy.
A
lot of people care what a guy from Duck Dynasty says, because they
agree with him, but there also are people out there who care what he
says, because they are thinking about killing themselves.
A
friend of mine from college named Brian Copeland posted his thoughts on
the whole controversy on Facebook (I shared it on my page). I asked
his permission if I could write about our friendship and share some of
his thoughts with you.
Brian
is gay, and he and his spouse Greg have adopted a beautiful boy
together. Back when I knew Brian at the little Baptist college we
attended together, I didn't really know what it meant to be gay. I knew
what a homosexual was, but I didn't know any who were out. By
that time, I had ingested plenty of "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and
Steve" sermons by preachers, and although by college I had begun to
question whether or not homosexuality was a sin (I wrote a research
paper on the subject), I had no real clue about the pain LGBT people experience due to condemnation by Christians.
Brian
and I had classes together, saw each other all the time, and even
lived in the same off-campus house together our senior year with a bunch
of other guys. Jokes were made behind Brian's back about him being
effeminate, but I really was clueless about his sexuality. Brian came
out a few years after graduation, and by that time I had friendships
with gay and lesbian people and no longer had any questions whether or
not homosexuality was a sin. So, I e-mailed Brian and told him I had
heard the news and that I accepted him as he was--and I apologized for
not being the sort of friend to him in college that he needed. We've
stayed in touch since.
I
could have guessed that Brian bore real emotional pain as he struggled
with his own sexuality. The college we went to was not exactly
open-minded, and it probably still is one of the last places a
homosexual person would ever come out. Also, Brian came from a small
community in East Tennessee, where he grew up going to church with his
family and hearing sermons not very different from what Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty would appreciate.
All that being said, I really had no idea how deeply Brian was hurting
when we were in college together. When Brian shared his thoughts about
the whole Duck Dynasty stuff last week, he also shared his experience of pain growing up feeling he was bound for hell and unloved by God.
Here's a bit of what Brian shared publicly on Facebook:
My entire childhood
and teen life, I sat every Wednesday, most Fridays, every Saturday
and every Sunday night and Sunday mornings (yes, we went to church that
much) and heard the exact rhetoric Mr. Robertson said. I was not
shocked by his comments. What he said was mild compared to some of the
preaching I grew up with. . .
After those weekly
sermons that told me that gays were demon-possessed, that the Lake of
Fire was made for the perverted homosexuals, that fags should all be
put to death, I'd go to my room as a 12-year-old and weep.
I remember hearing a sermon on Job 42:6...about "if I abhor it, get in
ashes." I remember sneaking ashes into my bedroom, spreading them out
on a trash bag and laying in them all night crying my eyes out begging
for my demons to be removed.
I remember when I was
15 calling my dad's insurance company and asking if castration was
covered under the plan and if my dad and mom would ever know if I did
it.
I remember the choice, yes, the CHOICE I made not
to be gay (because it wasn't a choice), but rather the choice to stay
alive instead of killing myself in a dorm room when I was 19, plotting
on how a sheet would hang around my neck from a hook in the cinder
blocks of my dorm. That choice to live was the best one I ever made.
Life is amazing. Life is happy. Life couldn't be better here on this
side. . .
I
really do thank God that Brian made the choice to live. I made a
mistake thinking that in 2014 the kind of anti-LGBT views expressed by
someone like a TV reality star don't matter, because they do matter.
They matter, because there are too many young people like Brian out
there who still believe that God is ready to destroy them because of
their most basic sexual desires. It's easy to think that in the world
we live in today as opposed to twenty years ago (or longer)--that with
so many LGBT role models--that with the "It Gets Better" campaign--that
the days of young people contemplating suicide because of their
sexuality are over. They are not.
I'm
straight, so I am admittedly removed from what it is to be told that
"God hates the sin but not the sinner" and from the pain of my family
and my church rejecting me because of my sexual orientation.
Nonetheless, I like to think that I have been sensitized to the pain of
LGBT people due to the many LGBT people I know personally, but I
realized after reading Brian's words that I am at times guilty of only
seeing what I want to see, only surrounding myself with people who
believe the same way I do about LGBT people and forgetting the terrible
pain so many LGBT people remain in.
I
pastor a church where there is an incredible amount of
LGBT/heterosexual integration. LGBT people have held and continue to
hold every position of authority the church has, and I believe that by
and large within our church community people are accepted as people
regardless of their sexuality. Yet, I believe the flip side of the
grace we enjoy together can also mean that we can forget that in most
churches a far different message is being proclaimed and LGBT people
remain tormented and suicidal.
So,
I ask you the people of CCCUCC--both straight and LGBT--to not make the
same mistake I did. The advocacy we have done in my short time here
and in the many years before I came here on behalf of LGBT
people--efforts to proclaim loudly the message that God accepts LGBT
people--is still not enough. There are plenty of voices of hate coming
from Christian churches and too few voices of grace. The loudest voices
promoting equality for LGBT people tend to be secular ones rather than
religious ones. Does not our faith in a loving God demand that we do
more for young people in grievous pain because of the image of a
wrathful God they have been taught? Shouldn't we be doing more to
declare to young LGBT Christians and those who care about them that they
do not have to choose between holding onto a faith that condemns them
and rejecting it altogether, because there is a third way--understanding
that God accepts them as they are?
If your answer is no, perhaps you should read my friend Brian's words again.
Chase
