While answering the phones for a suicide hotline, not a day would go by
that I didn't receive one to six calls from suicidal teens, many of them
citing sexual orientation as the source of their pain, confusion and
suffering.
Homosexuality is no longer an issue in mainstream
society. Other than the church, most people are accepting and blind to
the issue. It is even accepted among teens themselves. On a recent
trip to Provincetown, MA, a town known to be a haven for homosexual
people, half the tourists were breeders and many of them brought their
small children with them. Homosexuality wasn't even something that
needed to be tolerated, it just was. Indeed, within this small town,
the lion lays down with the lamb and the child plays at the den of the
cobra. I just wasn't sure who the lions or lambs were. It didn't
matter. Persecuted and persecutors, no more.
Some of my gay
teen callers are sometimes threatened and bullied in school and it is
usually because they are in the closet and the bullies are trying to
elicit a response from them. For the kid who is openly gay, a bully
can't hold anything over them and tends to leave them alone. The kid who
is out also tends to have support from other kids who can see the value
in them and appreciate their honesty. It has been my lifetime
observation that in five or ten years, homophobic bullies eventually
come out of the closet themselves as their bullying was really the
exploration of their own sexuality and boundaries. They are more to be
pitied than censured.
Predominately, having found acceptance by
their peers, my gay callers are more alienated by their parents or by
the teachings of the church than peers. Since the Westboro Church has
taught us that God hates, and He hates gays most of all, it is no wonder
that a teen struggling with his identity can feel alone, abandoned,
forgotten, hated and ostracized. If even God hates you, who could be
for you?
Back in biblical days, the life expectancy of an adult
was thirty or forty years of age and further complicating matters, most
children died before their tenth birth-date due to disease or illness.
If there was a famine, food was given to adults before being given to a
child because the chance of a child making it to adulthood was slim and
feeding them was considered to be a waste of resources.
Anyone
who partook in homosexual practices or committed "the sin of Onan"
(masturbation), was participating in an act which wasted seed. Those
activities did not produce offspring and in those days, for the good of
the tribe or community, it was important for procreation to take
precedent over self pleasure. It was also common practice for thirteen
year old girls to be sold into marriage as soon as they hit puberty, in
an effort for them to produce as many children as possible before they
died at the ripe old age of thirty. A perfect example of this practice
is Joseph who was about forty and Mary who was thirteen.
The
church and society have long forgotten why homosexuality and
masturbation was frowned upon but they still hold blindly on to those
archaic prejudices today. According to the National Alliance on Mental
Illness, nearly 5000 teens commit suicide each year and approximately 2
million U.S. teens attempt suicide.
Enter Lady Gaga (Stefani
Joanne Angelina Germanotta). She is a marketing genius for using
gimmicks, controversy and over the top behavior and costumes to build an
estimated net worth of $190 million. What she does with those millions
of dollars speaks volumes. Being the product of a Catholic school
education, she knows the pain and anguish of being different, even in a
Roman Catholic school setting - where she herself was bullied and
teased. Because of the pain the church has inflicted upon her in her
youth, the church has become a target in her her music and marketing
genius.
Together with her mom, Lady Gaga created a foundation
called "Born This Way" which is a non-profit organization founded in
2011. It has the support of Harvard University, the Berkman Center for
Internet & Society, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation and the California Endowment. In September of 2012 Gaga was
awarded the LennonOno Grant For Peace from Yoko Ono for her work with
the foundation actively campaigning on pro-tolerance and peace issues.
The
foundation aims to create a "braver, kinder world" for youth, to create
safe-spaces, promote the learning of life skills, and provide
opportunities to improve their local communities. Some priorities of
the organization are teen suicide, bullying, homosexuality and school
violence.
It appears that Lady Gaga has done much to save the
lives of many teenagers struggling with sexual identity while the
institutional church appears to be unconcerned for the loss of many.
The score is Gaga: one; the institutional church: zero.
Lady
Gaga teaches us the very valuable lesson that even the most ardent
Puritan can learn, that acceptance does not make "wrong" right, it only
makes what was "wrong," precious. Another lesson Gaga teaches us is
that oppression breeds the power to oppose it and oppose it she has.
She has used the church's own intolerance to challenge it to grow.
Don't hate her when she blasts the church. Instead, ask why she is
blasting the church. Maybe it is time for the church to fix something.
Ultimately,
who cares what a hater thinks. I often try to get my callers to
discover that the wrong person they'll never mean anything. To the
right person, they'll mean everything. Thank you Lady Gaga for making
my job answering the suicide hotline much easier. To any church of
intolerance, I'll pray for you.
There are many churches who are
gay accepting and they proudly wave the rainbow flag but, the gay
community doesn't want their own church. They just want to be part of
everyday society. We don't see signs at restaurants advertising "Blacks
welcome here" or, "Woman may use front entrance." Why do we need flags
and signs advertising acceptance? It should just be. Isn't "Come, all
are welcome," enough?
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL)
Call 24/7
1-800-273-8255
"To
understand blue, first you have to understand yellow and orange. In
other words, in order to really understand anything you have to
understand its opposite."
-Vincent Van Gogh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quXq65p7YD4
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