Some Still Use Religion To Justify Their Hate

Lansing State Journal - Opinion - October 18, 2001 - Jody Valley

Falwell and his ilk need scapegoats to perpetuate their warped view of life.
The gay community has long been blamed for many things. We are used to being the resident scapegoats for numerous problems in this country, from the breakdown of the heterosexual family to the collapse of this country's moral underpinnings. So, I guess it should have come as no surprise that two leaders (Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson) of the Religious Right would blame the gay community - and a few other groups - for the horrific terrorist attacks on our nation. Later, Falwell supposedly apologized, but if you read the full text of his "apology," he made it clear that he meant what he had originally said, that he and his God blame us for creating an environment for bad things to happen to our country.
This is a loathsome thing to say, it comes from Falwell's anti-gay agenda and his attempts to make it look like its Gods agenda, as well.
Most people's religion promotes and encourages them to be good and loving people. However, there is a minority who use religion to further their own mean-spirited agendas. In general, our interpretation of the nature of God is a reflection of our own psyche. Our conception of God, Allah, Great Spirit - or the many other names we give to our higher power speaks tons about the nature of our hearts or mental health. Loving people conceive of God as primarily loving and caring, judgmental and hateful people focus on a wrathful and narrow-minded god. And those who need to control insist that everyone should believe exactly as they do. Getting everyone on the same page about the word of God is important for them in order to prop up their own beliefs, thereby creating a world that reflects their own life views. It also makes them feel secure because if everyone else believes exactly as they do, they must be right - a kind of reinforcing, circular thinking. If you mix this need to control with minds that are bent and full of hate - but believe they are doing God's work - you have the makings of a dangerous religious fanatic. People, who think this way, spread their loathing and create divisiveness through their words. They seek to degrade people, make them look less than others. They set up a group of people as objects of ridicule and scorn and blame them for the world's miseries.           These purveyors of malignity wrap their words around holy books and bad times. Then in their self-righteousness, they sit back and reject responsibility for the emotional pain they have inflicted and, all too often, the physical violence that grows out of their destructive words.
The gay community has long been targeted by these verbal assaults from Falwell, Robertson, and others. They, and their followers, are the ones who sustain and nourish an environment that has aided in making it physically and emotionally unsafe for gay and lesbian people (and those perceived to be gay). These attitudes have created a climate that gets gays and lesbians ridiculed, fired from their jobs, assaulted, sometimes murdered - and now, blamed for the horrendous acts of Sept 11.
These well-chosen toxic words that spew from the mouths of people like Falwell and Robertson are not from a loving god. No, these words are created from venom and come form the malicious hearts and conniving minds of hateful people. They cleverly attribute these poisonous utterances to their God, so that they don't have to be responsible for what they have said - all the while hoping that folks won't notice.

Jody Valley is an East Laninsg writer. She belongs to the State Journal's Voices panel whose members write a column each Thursday. Write to her c/o Lansing State Journal, 120 E Lenawee, and Lansing, MI 48919.

 

 

I concur with Jody on her views……Rex D.