HATE THE SINNER, LOVE THE SIN

Deborah Cox had a huge hit with the song “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here.” You know the one—the chorus was: How did you get here? Nobody’s supposed to be here.

But as we prepare to watch the Senate debate and discourse same sex marriage and the Federal Marriage Amendment—which almost no one believes will pass the floor—I offer the same question: How did we get here?



How did this once again become front and center and on the minds and mouths of politicians? There are no mass marriages occurring in San Francisco. A Massachusetts judge has ruled that out-of-state gays can no longer get married in that commonwealth. How did we wake up and discover clergy like Bishop Alfred Owens of Washington, DC and Bishop Eddie Long of Atlanta, GA, in the pockets of the Bush Administration, repeating that well-worn ugly condemnation-conversation. Meanwhile, Cindy Sheehan is still protesting the untimely death of her son and thousands of other sons and daughters in Iraq … and illegal immigration has become the hot button topic du jour. How did immigration and same-sex marriages become the “it” issues, while wars and wages, oil and overtime, 9/11 and W2s are the popular water cooler talk?

The traditional stance from the church of old was “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin.” That was the church’s way of suggesting that they could perform their Christian duty of being kind to one another as instructed in Ephesians 4:32. Christians were able to say, “I love you, but I can’t stand what you do” and still feel as if they were being dutiful and dainty, loving and logical. The mainstream mandate from religion was to be kind, be loving … but not tolerate. We don’t have to like you, but we are compelled, by duty to love you.



Those days are gone. Today, in the present clique-climate of the Union of Church and State, it appears brilliantly and maniacally timed that the church is vomiting up this new ugliness from the pulpit. The new hate is spewed as if it were directly from God’s mouth to man, even as the president plummets in the polls and simple folks on the streets of the good ol’ US of A are asking very complicated questions. We are being distracted by the debate over same-sex marriage. Mind you, I am in no way suggesting that this discussion isn’t one that must be had—and must be dealt with—but why now? Again, how did we get here?


Here’s my theory—as a man of the cloth, and, as a proud black gay man: The church and the state “Hates the Sinner, but Loves the Sin.” I am persuaded that church folks, privileged folks, assimilated Negroes and Latinos, housewives and Halliburton heirs are all quite happy with life and their various liberties and they don’t want anyone who suggests that things aren’t peachy-keen here in America. Therefore, they hate the sinner. They are sick and tired and angry and vocal at the Gay, the Lesbian, The Bisexual, The Transgendered Person, The Poor, The Worker, The Every Woman, who just won’t just sit down and shut up. They hate the “sinner” who won’t just blend into the background and take the crumbs—civil unions, domestic partner benefits—being offered. The church hates the “sinner” who cannot simply enjoy the privilege of singing in the choir, leading the ministry, working in the church, but, who must be an upstart and call the church on the many ways—not just with gays and lesbians, but with the poor, the undereducated, the near-homeless—it is not fulfilling its mission.



The church is finally and officially voicing the anger at the fact that “the sinner” will not simply go away. Rev. Willie Wilson in DC used the pulpit to berate lesbians, while Bishop Owens, in the same seat of the nation, used the word “faggot” and “sissy” from the pulpit. I was instantly reminded of preachers in Alabama and Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s, who, from the pulpit, must have told their congregations that they would not tolerate these uppity niggers trying to change the laws of the lands. Who would have thought that Dr. King’s dream would be for an ordained black Christian pastor in 2006 to be equally as vile and ignorant as his white counterpart of 50 years ago? How did we get here, indeed?



Both preachers and politicians love to hate the homosexual. They love the sin, because anytime things become too hot in the Senate or in Senegal, in the House or in their homes … they can throw their hat into that arena and are guaranteed an instant shift in the dynamic. It’s a proven manipulative tactic that has worked for all of their recent woes. It is a calculated effort by the far-right leadership to shift the tide and the topic so that voting people, working people, middle class people won’t ask real questions—Why are jobs exported to India? How did 9/11 happen? Why are the HIV positive still not receiving medications? Then, they won’t have to be waiting for real answers that will never arrive. How did we get here, to this place of hating the sinner and loving the sin in present day America? We got here by the works of Karl Rove and cunning rogues who think so little about regular folks that they would dare suggest an amendment to the Constitution, while they are collectively minimizing the mastery of the document itself.




The forefathers were crafting a series of privileges for themselves, never expecting their wives to work, never expecting the slaves to be free and never expecting their children might not be able to compete in a global market. But they wrote in, in English and in arrogance, to protect themselves, not knowing that in doing so they were protecting you, me and all of us.

How did we get here—controlled and categorized, complacent and complicit, scared and scarred—and allow ourselves to be so easily and readily riled? How did we get here, having this debate about whether we would amend the Constitution to protect marriage? That is not the question at all. The question is neither how do we, as an LGBT community, fight nor how do get our family and friends to support us.



Instead, we should ask how to get America back on course so that we are asking questions and pushing issues, not buttons. How do we take back our votes and our voices, so that the preacher, the teacher, the politician or the spin-doctor can’t trick or treat us into acquiescing our right to bear arms, with protest placards held high, and lift our hands and our concerns? We do it by remembering that our right to be exactly who we are is not debatable.



We are beings, human and whole, who have every right to stand up and stand on the same privileges afforded to every other living, breathing, human being in this country. We have to start getting into the debate of who we are and turn the debate back to what we deserve—everything!