Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Finally, a preacher who isn't blaming the victim.

Bishop Gene Robinson seems to get it, as explained in a column in the Huffington Post. He understands religion's systemic role in the numerous recent suicides of young gays. Excerpt:
The case of Tyler Clementi is especially instructive about how far we have to go in accepting our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children. Clementi was an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University whose roommate secretly filmed a sexual encounter he had with another male student and then posted it on the internet.
Think about it. If Tyler had been heterosexual and instead filmed having sex with his girlfriend, it would still be an inappropriate invasion of his privacy and tasteless to post the video online. And it certainly would have been embarrassing for Tyler and the girl. But chances are he would have been the recipient of some congratulatory remarks from friends about what a stud he was. And if he was straight

We need to start hearing more religious voices like this one and stop giving any hate-filled "preacher" all the press he desires simply because he is yelling the loudest.

he likely wouldn't have contemplated -- not to mention successfully accomplished -- his own suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
No, Tyler was a victim -- not of an inner disturbance of depression or mental illness--but of an external and in part religiously inspired disdain and hatred of gay people.

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