Question:
As a peace activist in the Catholic Church I’ve been having an ongoing talk with a number of my nonviolent colleagues and we’ve begun to be somewhat critical of the stance of religious institutions towards gays and lesbians. Since I usually only look at nonviolent literature from a Christian perspective, I was wondering what other nonviolent activists think about this? It seems to me that the acceptance of a nonviolent lifestyle would automatically support those who are undergoing persecution. Any thoughts? Also… do you know of any literature on this subject?
Answer:
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By: Metta Center
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I can tell you what this nonviolence activist thinks: the bigotry promoted by these Christians is violence; and it causes and is the justification for harassment, discrimination, and, ultimately, murder. Any person who, by way of a religious or any other kind of argument, promotes the belief that homosexuality is somehow wrong, flawed, “not moral,” “against nature,” or otherwise aberrant, abnormal, or undesirable is, in effect, promoting murder. Period.
The physical and psychological violence—killing, discrimination, harassment, etc—against gays has its beginnings in the hate expressed by those religious leaders who express disapproval of gays. They may not always express it explicitly as hate, often phrasing their views in ways that seem ostensibly polite, but the positions voiced by these religious leaders not only serve to justify violence, they are the very thing that sets that violence in motion. Without the behavior of religious leaders who call on their followers to reject homosexuality, there would be no gay-bashings. Witness the recent reports of suicides by gay teenagers who were bullied by their peers. Where did these kids get the idea to demonize and persecute a classmate for being gay? As the old song goes, “you’ve got to be carefully taught.” So who, in our culture, is doing the teaching? Religious leaders are perceived to be in a position of moral authority; when they condemn (or deny) an inherent trait of some human beings they make violence against those human beings inevitable. Put another way, to cast gay people as outside of what is normal or accepted is to engage in the behavior that is the origin of all violence—the labeling of someone as “other,” which leads to the projection of all that one would not want to acknowledge in oneself onto them, ultimately leading to the desire for their annihilation.
I would reasonably expect this to be the view of anyone coming from an understanding of nonviolence, whatever their particular faith or regardless of whether they are religious, secular, or spiritual. In general my recommendation would be that if someone ever finds their religious beliefs and nonviolence coming into conflict with one another, that person should choose nonviolence.
Additional resources: Walter Wink has edited a book that may be of interest to the debate you’re having with your colleagues, you might also want to check out this article by Richard Deats. You should definitely check out the It Gets Better Project, a most innovative and inspiring nonviolent response to religious persecution of gays and the suffering caused by it.