Embracing Society's Most Vulnerable

John Crabtree-Ireland, a writer, actor and documentary filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles, writes in "Tightening the noose on young American gays," that the campaign on the part of many American parents to extirpate gayness when it shows up in their children is having disastrous consequences. Such strategies as "reparative therapy" and "transformational ministry," Crabtree-Ireland writes in this opinion column appearing in The Baltimore Sun of Sept. 1, 2005, have destroyed many gay adolescents' self-esteem to the point where "gay kids constitute nearly one-third of successful youth suicides."

If that weren't bad enough, Crabtree-Ireland continues, "Religiously affiliated groups in California recently drafted a ballot initiative that the state's attorney general has titled 'Elimination of Domestic Partner Rights.' ... Under such a law, even the lesser protection afforded by current domestic partner status would be stripped away: no rights to hospital visitation, adoption of children, insurance benefits or inheritance."

Despite the openness of their assault on gays and lesbians in America, Crabtree-Ireland says the promulgators of such strategies as "reparative therapy" and such public laws as the "Elimination of Domestic Partner Rights" ballot initiative are just as bad as the "hooded officials" in Iran who in the name of religious purity recently hanged a 14-year-old boy and a 16-year-old boy for having consensual gay sex.

Crabtree-Ireland closes:

As the pendulum swings further toward eroding civil liberties in our country, we should all take a moment to assess how much we have lost and where we are heading. If gay people are legislated into second-class citizen status, those who would do them harm will surely take it as a cue.

Only when we extract religious dogma from all three branches of government can we begin to reclaim the promise of our democracy for all, embracing society's most vulnerable. By doing so, we can gently loosen the noose that imperils their future.



But, wait! Embracing society's most vulnerable is exactly the message Jesus preached, is it not?

At least, so says Albert Nolan in Jesus before Christianity. Jesus was confronted with a situation in which the various parties of "haves" in 1st-century Israel — the Pharisees, Sadducees, etc. — tried to outdo one another in their punctilious observance of "the law and the prophets," forgetting the most important thing of all, compassion for the poor, the demon-afflicted, and the so-called sinners — all of whom constituted the "have nots."

The people who would vote yes on an "Elimination of Domestic Partner Rights" ballot initiative are the Pharisees of our day.

The problem is not that we need to "extract religious dogma from all three branches of government."

The problem is that what so many of us religious believers erroneously take to be "correct" dogma goes 180° against what Jesus taught!

"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone ... " (John 8:7). That ought to be the starting point for any dogma we might call truly Christian.