A heated Pub Politics

Day 201 – Last night was the most intense debate we’ve had on Pub Politics. Christine Johnson, Executive Director of South Carolina Equality joined us to talk about equal rights for gay, lesbian and bi-gender South Carolinians.

Let me say outright that I’m a very open-minded and accepting white southern male. I try to be friends with everyone, and I myself accept the decisions of my gay friends. Personal choice don’t bother me like they do some folks. While my religion says that homosexuality is a sin, and I believe it is, I myself am a sinner.

I find it bothersome that so many Christians put this sin on a pedestal while ignoring their own, and often more damaging sin. I’ve written repeatedly on this blog that jealousy and pride are sins that are far more damaging. After all, it wasn’t homosexuality that sent Lucifer to Hell and thus created all other sins. It was pride.

As CS Lewis wrote:

“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.”

That’s a lot to write to get to my point, but I as a southern white Christian male, I cannot talk about homosexuality without first laying down this preface. And that is my point exactly today.

In today’s episode of Pub Politics I got railed for making the accusation that in today’s world, it is the white Christian males who are being discriminated against. And yes, it is because of our own faults.

In Politics, when I’m thinking of Christian values, it seems that they have been pigeon-holed into a “my way, or the highway” sort of mentality. I’m young, so I can’t talk about “the way it used to be”. But it seems as if it’s getting worse. We all look like hypocrites.

Opposition to tolerance is almost becoming a rallying cry for the right, and it’s toxic to the future of the Conservative movement. If we want to be seen as legitimate in our rally for Christian morals, we have to start being better ambassadors of those beliefs. It starts with white, conservative men. Hate seems to be associated with our kind, and it won’t withstand the next generation unless there’s a massive shift in focus and change in hypocrisy. We must first admit our own sins before attacking others for theirs.

Jesus Christ loved everyone. And he wanted people to accept their imperfections and help others work through, or cope with their own differences. You can’t do that while you’re screaming at them. You were created in the image of God and it’s not my position to discriminate against his own creation, especially given my own sins.

I’m not saying that you should accept sin. Just the opposite. I’m saying that you should look at the sin that’s closest to you, that’s within you, before attacking others for theirs. Think of yourself in the position as being an ambassador. You are trying to carry the ideals of a faith, and be the best representation of those ideals possible.

Maybe then we can beat the reverse discrimination so many of us have brought on ourselves.

- Wesley Donehue