for the Bible tells them so

These evening I went with my ex-girlfriend to a screening of For the Bible Tells Me So that she put together with the LGBT group at her Church (a United Church of Christ in Lexington).
I don't know where to start.

Most of the viewers were the teenage members of the church. And it was truly amazing to see their incredulous reactions to the film. Having grown up in the self-described "bubble" of liberal Lexington, the kids had no real concept of the sort of blind hatred and discrimination from "Christians" chronicled in the film. Their naivety was beautiful and refreshing. I hope that for everyone younger than me from this point in history on, this sort of reaction is the norm.

Having grown up in Colorado with a family from backwoods Missouri, the scenes in the movie felt like a painful personal memory. My own coming out - to myself - culminated in the beginning of my junior year at the University of Northern Colorado. It became an unavoidable truth that I could no long deny. For more than six months I grieved furiously, crying myself to sleep. The pain was intense. It led to two hospitalizations and months of suicidality. I would have done anything to change myself. I hated that this was me. I hated my fragile self even more than I did before.

It was at this opportune moment that my University was visited by the Westboro Baptist Church, led by hatemonger Fred Phelps and his "God-hates-fags" sign-toting followers. He came in full-force, as he always did to Northern Colorado in the fall (to protest the annual Wyoming/Colorado State homecoming game, reminding students each year of how many days "Matthew Shepard has been burning in hell").
And there it was. A hard slap to the face. Violently reminding me of what I had learned many years earlier when my parents divorced and my father lost his mind: The Bible is a weapon. And no one hates like Christians.

At this time in college, I wore around my neck a star of David imposed over a Christan cross. I had made it myself, as no readily available jewelry felt authentic to me. With my upbringing I couldn't honestly wear a cross, nor a star. But after the Westboro Church made their entrance... I vividly remember ripping it from my neck. To look at it made me sick. To look at any cross, made me sick.
And I realized this evening that this is the case even still.
I'm an intelligent person. It pains me and makes me ashamed that I have such a negative, visceral reaction to religious iconography.
It's not just because of a single instance. It's not because of Reverend Phelps or Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh or any other right-wing nut-jobs. It's because of years and years of denigration. Hatred both brazen and covert. It's because of being told over, and over, and over again that I was an abomination. Told that, in the name of Christ, I am an abomination...

It pains me to admit that when I see a cross - whether atop a church or around someone's neck - I see a symbol of hate. Whenever I hear that someone is "a good Christian," what I really hear is "ignorant and hateful." To me, all of Christianity had become a hate group.
Intellectually I *know* the error of this. I know that the hateful, ignorant people splayed across the news represent only a fraction of a percentage of Christians. I know that hate is not a hallmark of Christianity. Certainly not of true Christianity. But the hatred that I have seen scares me. And it scares me even more how drawn people seem to be to it, and how they buy in so whole-heartedly. How they flock so hungrily to Pat Robertson and James Dobson and so many others like them. Their power scares me. Their influence scares me. Their ignorance and hatred scares me.

I can only keep in mind the reactions of the youth. The shock and incredulity they showed in response to this hatred. It was blissfully foreign to them.
I can only pray, to whatever God, that the naive, loving bubble protecting the youth of Hancock Church can expand enough to engulf us all.