They'll know we are Christians by our hatred

Thu, May 19th 2016, 11:31 AM

There is a well-known Christian hymn entitled "They'll Know We are Christians by Our Love", often vigorously sung by Bahamian Christians. The song celebrates the ideal of love of neighbor and Christian unity, with the refrain:

"And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,

Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love."

Christian love expresses itself in forgiveness and reconciliation; respect for the dignity of others; empathy and compassion; a moral imagination of inclusion and fellowship; charity in its many manifestations; justice and a wellspring of virtues.

All Christians fall short of the ideal of love, which should make for humility in those who espouse such love and an abiding love of God and neighbor.

The referendum debate has exposed, like a hardened boil lanced, the festering pus of bigotry, hatred, intolerance, hypocrisy, demonization of gays and lesbians, xenophobia and other bile in the hearts, spirits and minds of many Bahamians who boast of their Christian credentials.

Instead of love, many Christians, including here at home, are known less for their love: They'll know we are Christians by our hatred.

Given the global, though uneven, advance of rights for those in the LGBT community, the backlash was inevitable, as has been the backlash after progress for racial and gender equality.

Unable to easily castigate gays and lesbians as self-righteously and as joyfully as they have in the past, a pack of scowling pastors, in the face of the overwhelming opinion of the best legal minds in the country, are hell-bent in insisting that question four in the referendum is a supposed subterfuge to introduce same-sex marriage.

Separately, Pastor Cedric Moss has gone as far as to state that the Christie administration is not telling the full truth about question four and that the government has a hidden agenda.

There is a not-so-hidden agenda in the referendum debate. It is by those who have a long history of demonizing and sowing intolerance toward gays and lesbians, and who are using question four to spew their venom against the particular object of their hatred. They'll know we are Christians by our demonization of gays and lesbians.

Arrogantly
That these pastors have organized themselves, arrogantly, under the banner Save Our Bahamas, suggests that gays and lesbians are somehow an Armageddon-like and existential threat to The Bahamas.

The same Armageddon was supposed to have befallen The Bahamas when gay and lesbian cruise ship passengers visited the country.

Those who demonstrated against these cruise passengers should have protested real threats to The Bahamas such as hypocritical pastors using religion to aggrandize themselves and to make huge profits off their congregants instead of serving the poor. The moneychangers are still in the temple.

That the sky has not fallen and all hell hath not broken loose in jurisdictions where same-sex marriage exists is an irrelevance to those whose fevered imaginations are boiling with fire and brimstone. Hell hath no fury like a cleric scorning God's children who happen to be homosexual.

While they are busy supposedly saving The Bahamas from their favorite people to demonize, the real threats of environmental degradation, climate change and voracious greed by the Earth's polluters are resulting in the real threat of rising sea levels.

We urgently need a Save Our Bahamas campaign. But it should be targeted against the direct threat of global warming and not the imagined threat of gays and lesbians. The high possibility of an oil spill from drilling in our pristine waters is also more of a threat than the fictions and fixations of the rabid homophobes.

Ironically, though these pastors don't oppose questions one through three, their febrile opposition to number four will likely help to defeat the questions they claim not to oppose but for which they have not campaigned as vigorously as they have against number four.

It is of no surprise they have demonstrated in their campaign of delusion and hatred that they are more exercised by gays and lesbians than they are supportive of equality for women. This is demonstrative of their ethical disequilibrium.

Seemingly
Though we are in the 21st century, these men seemingly would prefer to live in a century where apostates could be stoned for their sins. Among them are those who would be happy to throw the first and last stones.

After photos recently went viral of a Bahamian who entered into a same-sex union with his partner in the United States, where such marriages are legal, there was vitriol from some of the usual chorus of suspects. That a purposeful and intentional union grounded in love and mutual respect, which seeks to formalize the virtues of marriage, is the object of vitriol vomited by some, is another round of hate-filled belligerence by many with crashed marriages in a highly polygamous society.

Why do some of us spend so much time attacking gays and lesbians? They'll know we are Christians by our judgmentalism, our hatred, our prejudice. There must be a smug and warm self-satisfaction by this brand of Christians.

The homophobia of the Old Testament wannabees, of pastors and some adherents, is cut of a garment of prejudice derived from an entrenched fundamentalism in The Bahamas. It is a narrow worldview proselytized by intolerant hypocrites with hidden agendas.

The open misogynists and sexists have made clear that women should be beholden to men, that men are inherently superior, that a woman cannot be raped in a marriage and that women are already equal enough. But there are scores of other men, who pretend to believe in equality, but who, in their heart-of-hearts, do not view women as equals. Some of them sit in Parliament. There is an overabundance of them in religious ministry.

It is tragically telling that neither Prime Minister Perry Christie, the self-described gladiator, nor Opposition Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis, a flip-flopper in the equality debate, have vigorously campaigned for the referendum.

Two of the major political leaders in the country have only given lip-service to equality for women. The referendum may well be doomed because many Bahamian men feel that too many women are already in charge and have advanced as much as they should educationally and professionally, particularly in the public and private sectors. These men tightly grip the reins of power in the pulpit and in politics.

In a backlash to the advancement of women over the decades, the referendum is an opportunity for many men to vote their view that women have gone far enough.

Basically
The view expressed by the senior pastor of a local church that women are basically already equal to men in The Bahamas does not express the fuller reality of gender equality. His viewpoint is limited and telling, especially as a religious leader.

Women have advanced in many areas. But inequality remains constitutionally and legally in areas such as marital rape. There is still tremendous social ground to travel in the advancement of women in the upper echelons of politics in the national Cabinet and in Parliament.

Frighteningly, many women share the view that men are superior. Indeed, women may be the deciding factor against the passage of the questions.

Equally alarming are the supposedly intelligent people, including at least two Queen's Counsels, using xenophobic or asinine arguments about certain referendum questions.

Though painful to admit, we are in a sinkhole of ignorance and bigotry, an anti-intellectualism and irrationality in which we are gleefully reveling and rejoicing. Many of us are enjoying our stupidity and narrow-minded nationalism.

The referendum is a fairly simple exercise of ensuring basic equality, something that is a no-brainer in but a few countries in the world. But while wrecking the equality referendum in 2002, the PLP unleashed a fury of fundamentalism, prejudice and xenophobia. We may have continued constitutional discrimination for another generation thanks to Christie and the PLP.

Typically brazenly disingenuous, Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis blamed former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham for politicizing the 2002 referendum. Back then the questions near unanimously passed in Parliament.

Then sensing a political opportunity, the PLP abandoned equality and bludgeoned the referendum with specious arguments aided by a number of clerics, including a preening pandering partisan pompous prelate who claimed the high moral ground even as he sank in the morass and quagmire of his holy hypocrisy.

The 2002 referendum question would have passed if they were not poisoned to death by noxious arguments. By 2016, the poison has bled through the body politic, and we are now deeply sickened as a society and as a people by its paralyzing effects, quite likely killing off the prospects of basic justice and equality.

But thank God, at least we are a good Christian people, one of God's most-favored nations and anointed. They'll know we are Christians by our hatred, intolerance, bigotry, ignorance and prejudice.

o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.

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