Idiotic Indiana

jamin | March 26, 2015 | 0 Comments

I’ve only been to Indiana once and it was terrible. It was for a United Methodist Men’s retreat and a group of teen boys from my church went. I was bored for most of it and wasn’t interested in the seminars they had. I don’t remember attending any worship services or interacting with any of the men there much. I do remember being picked on for an assumption that I was gay and the other 7 or so guys from my church weren’t. One of them, now deceased, made my weekend a living hell (made inappropriate passes and such) so much that I had to yell at them halfway through the bus ride back home to Baltimore (a very long ride from Purdue University) to leave me alone, which prompted my father to sit on an armrest at the front of the bus and do nothing but watch them the entire rest of the ride home. (Why I wasn’t just moved away from them, I don’t know. But thanks Dad for doing what you could to defuse the situation. Honestly, though, I really didn’t want to go on the trip because of who was going and I knew they’d bully me, but it wasn’t worth protesting because it wouldn’t have done any good. I think I remember saying I didn’t want to go but was told that I was going because it was good to be around Christian men. Heh.)

Dovetailing from that story of horrible examples of Christian boys, I want to get into this religious freedom lie that Indiana put forth in the form of a bill that got the governor’s signature. It allows businesses to discriminate against gay people based on a sincerely held religious belief. This isn’t just for gay people, though. You can have a sincerely held religious belief if you’re against abortion, birth control, black people (the KKK is a Christian organization), interracial couples, divorced couples, etc. Granted, the ones most affected by this will likely be LGBT people and black and brown people next, but I just want to know how this I religious freedom.

Christians, how is it infringing on our religion if we aren’t allowed to discriminate against LGBT people in our businesses?

What part of the Bible prohibits serving LGBT customers? Is it a sin thing? Are we picking out this one (potential) thing to harp on and hinge our faith on? Is that what has become of us?

Why aren’t we discriminating against divorced people, single parents, the morbidly obese who got that way from gluttony, and greedy rich people? How will LGBT people be inspired to fall in love with Jesus when they will be turned away like this?

I know some more conservative Christians who agree with this ruling in Indiana read my blog, so please respond, y’all. I really want to know the mindset behind this that you can back up with the Bible that allows you to turn away serving someone through your business who could learn more about the unconditional love of Jesus by you rejecting their humanity outright. Are we too busy conflating our religious freedom with political beliefs, which Jesus never said to combine. In fact, he was above politics and didn’t pay it much mind aside from “Pay Caesar what is Caesar’s, and pay God what’s is God’s,” and then moved on to like heal people, raise the dead, feed the hungry, and other more meaningful stuff.

Help a brotha understand! Please. I implore thee. If this is where American Christianity is headed, I want to start an underground cult without y’all because this doesn’t look like any love for Jesus or of Jesus that I want to be a part of. Y’all can have it.