Tuesday, June 14, 2016

An Open Letter to the LGBTQ Community

Dear LGBTQ Community,

I would like to extend my sincerest condolences to you and your loved ones as you grieve the loss of loved ones and family and friends from the terror attack at Pulse in Orlando. I have heard it said love is love is love, but I would take it one step further. Life is life is life and all life is sacred. Love begets life.

I would also like to apologize if I or any of my fellow Catholic brothers and sisters may have made you feel like your life had less worth or dignity for any reason whatsoever. Your life, as all life, is sacred.

We have been at odds for many things and I don't see a need to rehash any of the ways we have disagreed with one another and how we choose to live our lives or run our businesses or practice our religions etc, etc. What I hope we can do is find common ground and combat hate. 

This is our mutual and strongest enemy.

You see, you were murdered in Orlando. But you and I also have brothers and sisters murdered in Nigeria for how we live and practice our faith. You and I have brothers and sisters who are murdered in Afghanistan. You and I have brothers and sisters who are murdered in Syria. You and I have brothers and sisters who live in constant fear. Our Catholic brothers and sisters are shot in the head, burned alive, raped, homes burned to the ground, sold into sex slavery, beheaded with their heads put on stakes, drowned, hacked to death by machetes, starved, children mutilated, publicly humiliated, modest religious sisters and priests paraded through the streets naked and tortured, etc. Muslim sympathizers have the same fate. Your brothers and sisters in the LGBT Community are thrown off buildings, gang raped, and murdered just as we are.

I hope that what can come from this horrific and terrible tragedy in Orlando is unity.

My faith didn't cause the mass murder in Orlando or the 25 men murdered for being gay in Syria just as your community didn't cause the murders of 300 children, women, and elderly in Syria.

What has caused these murders is hatred. Even Muslim sympathizers are annihilated by hate. Hate knows no religion, sex, race. Hatred does not discriminate. Hatred kills from the inside until it has to kill on the outside.  There are bad people, period, but any organized effort to kill in the name of hate must be stood up to and stopped. This persecution is not an American problem  - it is a global one and it has gone on for centuries. We just choose to ignore it until it hits home.

Hatred comes from choosing not to love someone. Hatred comes from choosing not to forgive someone. NO ONE is immune to hatred. This is the hardest teaching in Christianity... when the Lord says that it is easy to love our friends as even hypocrites can do that, but He instructs us to love our enemies.  Even if you do not believe in Christianity or God, even as a fellow human being, you can easily see the benefit and great difficulty of trying to love not only our neighbor, but our enemy as well.

Please, do not reject my condolences. I offer them in love in the midst of a tragedy that does not just affect you, but all of humanity.  I understand what you are going through, as I have wept for my murdered brothers and sisters around the globe and seen even here, in shootings, people asked if they believe in God and then subsequently executed. I fear it could be me or my children one day, too, that are killed for our faith. I hope your condolences for our persecuted brethren around the world, even here, are also offered in love. There is no other option but to unite against this destructive hatred, whether it breeds in the heart of a Muslim man who has pledged allegiance to ISIS or Boko Haram, whether it breeds in the heart of a pastor who condemns and sanctions violence in the name of the Lord, or whether it breeds in the heart of a member of the LGBT community who seeks to eradicate society of Christianity. You see,

hate is hate is hate is hate.

And death is death is death is death.

But the most powerful enabler of all is silence.


Again, I grieve with you. I love you, and I pray for the peace that surpasses all understanding, as we continue to swim upstream against the hatred that would wash us both away.









No comments:

Post a Comment