The suicide of Tyler Clementi has shone a light upon the reality that, for all our vaunted progress in acceptance and tolerance, far too many young people face not bullying, but discriminatory violence because they exist as they are.
And the Christian Churches have just not done enough, said enough, moved far enough, to be a force for change.
Our Discipline states, unequivocally, that "homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching." Until that phrase is struck, anything the United Methodist Church tries to do to help sexual minorities, including most especially sexual minority youth, is empty, hollow, hypocritical. Until we strike from our life the idea that some human beings, simply by living life as they were created, are outside the grace of God, how can we offer a hand up to those beaten down, heal the wounds inflicted by a society that only acts out the disregard embedded in that simple phrase?
Our excuses are as hollow as Cain's. If we cannot hear the cry from the graves of those who found in death the only possible respite from discrimination and violence, we are failing to live as the Church. Our self-aggrandizing claims of "inclusiveness", of "openness", ring hollow to those who hear that who they are does not go along with being a follower of the crucified one.
While individual churches can and should open themselves to all persons, and teach not just tolerance, but the acceptance that is inherent in the grace of Christ, we must also work to eradicate forever from our collective statements of belief that some human beings are less worthy of love and acceptance than others.
Unless we do so, we are implicated in the deaths of those who could not even turn to the Church of Jesus Christ, in whatever form it may have taken in their too-brief lives, for a place of refuge, a comfort, and a source of strength.
UPDATE: A real live Texas preacher takes on the haters.
UPDATE II: I feel like Glenn Greenwald here . . . Anyway, thanks to Alan, here is yet another voice. The chorus is growing, I think.
Virtual Tin Cup
