The God of gays

Homosexuality is against the law of God.

The Bible says being gay is a sin.

When I hear statements like these, I wonder which God it is they’re talking about. It certainly isn’t the God I grew up with or the one I believe in. It definitely isn’t the God my friends and family worship or go to Mass to see. I wonder which God they’re referring to when they say that storms, accidents and AIDS were all sent by God as a punishment for gay people. 

I cannot imagine that there is actually a god who would reach down and strike me for being true to myself, for finding love, and for marrying my wife. That really doesn’t sound like my God who has allowed me to build a happy and healthy (yet very gay) life. 

So that makes me wonder, which God are they talking about? Which God is this that is sickened by homosexuality? What kind of God is it that supposedly cannot stomach my “gay lifestyle,” even if for the most part it only involves work, cooking, cleaning, laundry and sleep?

Because if we’re talking about the same God, then I’d long have been punished for my “sinful” life. I’d have grown warts on my face and died of a cruel disease. I’d never have met good gay friends, or have gotten a good job. A vengeful God wouldn’t give an evil gay person the mental capacity to finish school. I wouldn’t be successful. I wouldn’t be good, conscientious, or kind.

A gay-hating God wouldn’t make gays beautiful. An all-powerful supreme being who truly despises homosexuals would only make them bad and ugly, right?

Come to think of it, if God is all-knowing and created everything, why would he create people He abhors? Would that God want disgusting creatures walking around mocking Him every second doing things He hates? That doesn’t even make sense.

But the bible says…

I understand. It is not for humans to decide what God is and what God is not. All the answers are supposedly found in a book written by the messengers of God. Okay. But in this same book there are more regulations to kill women who are non-virgins than there are restrictions on sex between two men and between two women. There are far more mentions of rape, the validity of slavery, and the normal practice of trading wives.

We’ve been taught time and again in religion class that the Bible is not to be taken literally and should only serve as a guide. So I don’t understand when people take one passage and use it to condemn an entire class of people and say that it is what God wants. Which God are they talking about? How come they get to decide what God is and what God is not?

 

Which God are we talking about?

You see, I don’t believe in your God who dislikes homosexual acts and compels you to say it out loud. I don’t like that this same God is suddenly quiet about your trip to the massage parlor, your visit to your mistress, or your pre-marital sex you brag about as a show of manhood. Your god does not object about your ogling a 14-year-old, or your encounter with a girl who was too drunk to give you her consent.

Your kind of god is one who condemns love between two consenting adults louder than he condemns sex with minors, stronger than his disapproval of going to strip clubs, or more powerfully than prohibiting molesting your own child. 

How do I know this of your god? I know because I don’t see you condemning womanizers, pedophiles, and heterosexual perverts. I don’t see you maligning them for how they live their lives. You seem to be so preoccupied with picking out the “sins” of homosexuals as if your god’s only mission is to hate gays.

What kind of god is obsessed solely with persecuting one particular class of people? Are gays the only ones who are hell-bound?

Yours is the kind of god who seems to agree with you when you choose to obsess with homosexuality as your pet bible teaching, disregarding all the other rules the bible has for you, like against wearing different fabrics or eating shellfish – all of which appear in the same book in the bible (link to Leviticus) you love to quote to malign us.

I’m sorry, but I thought that first and foremost, God is love. Yet yours appears not to be a loving god. Instead it is a god of hate. Your angry face, as His devoted messenger, is the example of your hateful God’s teachings. Fortunately, your god is different from mine. 

God of love

Yours is not my kind of god. Nor is he the God that watches over my fellow gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender friends.

The God of gays loves us from the moment we were born and never stops doing so, no matter how we look and act, or who and how we love. Sadly, this is more than what can be said of parents who reject their own children who are gay. These so-called godly parents quote the bible when they abandon the same children their own God would not.

It’s the God of gays I know and follow, and whose rules I shall apply to my life. Love one another as you love me. Come to me all you who are tired and wounded. Even the passage, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be open to you.” never once had a qualifier that said, “Except if you’re gay.”

Perhaps it’s time to accept that we have different interpretations and versions of that God, because ours certainly does not punish us or promise us hell for living the way He himself created us. We were created in His image and likeness. Our God teaches kindness and acceptance. Our God never wished anyone harm. Our God’s message is love, and He knows there is nothing wrong about how and with whom we express it.

Maybe it’s time to apply your own rules only to your own life and to stop condemning others whose beliefs are different from yours. That actually makes more sense, right?

The afterlife

Sure, you might say that it’s not the life on earth that we should worry about but what awaits on the other side. We all know that according to the Bible, one must do good while living to be ensured of eternal life. 

So then let me ask you a simple question:

If there actually is a heaven, which question do you think would most likely be asked upon entry?

“Did you love others with all of your heart?”

Or,

“Did you hate others enough to believe that only you are worthy?”  – Rappler.com  

Shakira Andrea Sison is a two-time Palanca-winning essayist. She currently works in finance and spends her non-working hours finding God in subway trains. She is a veterinarian by education and was managing a retail corporation in Manila before relocating to New York in 2002. Her column appears on Thursdays. Follow her on Twitter: @shakirasison and on Facebook.com/sisonshakira