'I'm not homophobic, but'... I knew that the next sentence would definitely be something homophobic. I'm leading the church coffee morning where we sit around and share a scripture and events from our lives, it gives me a great opportunity to not preach at people but to pastor them, and I would encourage every church to organise something similar. I wasn't sure what the next sentence would be, but I knew that it would be homophobic.
'I'm not homophobic, but, I don't think that gay people should be given the same rights as normal people.'
This was what one kindly old parishioner said.
The whole table went quiet and some of us began to grin a little.
'My dear,' I reply. 'That is exactly what being homophobic means.'
'Is it?' My kindly parishioner said. 'In that case I'm for gay marriage. I don't want to be homophobic, those people are horrible.'
This is the kind of thing I hear a lot pastoring between generations, what the younger generation think of as homophobic or racist, is often a lack of communication to the older generation. People become entrenched in their culture and anything different is bad, since they take comfort in their own traditions. And we all do it. For myself, a good example would be in corporate worship. I'm quiet and reserved, I appreciate time for contemplation. I dread having to sit through forty minutes of high energy praise in a Pentecostal church. Conversely, I appreciate how hard it is for some of my more Charismatic sisters and brothers to sit quietly for silent prayer, how constrained they feel. I still bristle at very high Catholic worship with it's bells and smells and smoking handbags. I know the way that I like to worship, what brings me close to God, I'm not going to say that my way is right, but it's what I'm familiar with.
And it's this familiarity which builds prejudice, I believe. I'm of the generation (Gen X) where gay people were not the over the top stereotype of John Inman in Are You Being Served, a veritable pantomime dame in so many ways. Gay people are my fellow students and work colleagues. Although it's still a closet issue.
My retired parishioner have never had this experience, so for them, gay people are something different, a challenge to their perceived traditions, and maybe even something to be feared.
'They just don't have any morality these days' is something else I hear a lot. This usually revolves around sexual liberation and the accounts of 'bed hopping' among Millennials. I then like to point out that it was my generation who invented internet pornography and their generation who began the trend for the quick and easy divorce. The image of Don Draper going from his marital bedroom to that of his mistress was something of a reality rather than just a TV show in their generation. Indeed infidelity was expected.
Infidelity is not accepted with Millennials. While they may not share the same view of marriage as previous generations, that does not absolve them of commitment. And permissive sexuality does not cheapen it. When talk like this arises from my more seasoned congregation members, I like to ask them about their sexual history and whether they were as chaste as they expect this generation to be. The answer is almost universally, No.
When I hear Millennials being called tolerant, that brings a smile to my face. Of course that phrase is often used derogatory, to say that 'anything goes', that they will tolerate any vice. From experience, this is quite wrong. Millennials have values and ethics, they are different from the Baby Boom generation, but they are quite upstanding.
I've not heard of any car trips to neighbouring cities because they have a black or Asian community, the trip being arranged to conduct violence against the other. They no longer tolerate racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs on prime time television as I was exposed to, being told by national broadcasters that such behaviour was normal and accepted.
And that returns me to the opening statement, that gay people should not have the same rights as normal people. It was wish great joy when that parishioner met a very dear bisexual friend of mine and was impressed with her as a person. She is a very impressive lady. She's erudite, well read, and quite charming. When my parishioner eventually learned that she was bisexual her comment to me was: 'but she doesn't look lesbian'. What exactly a lesbian is supposed to look like is beyond me. My parishioner now adores my friend and constantly asks as to her well being and when she will be at church next. Believe it or not, gay people do not have three heads and eat children. This may seem obvious to most people, but you'd be surprised at how I've heard them described in churches.
And this is why I'm compelled to write an article like this one, and I'm also deliberate to avoid theology and clobber bible verses on either side. It's important that generation speaks to generation, that neither are too stubborn to love the other. The older generation is stuck in their ways, but I have found that they are open to change when it's presented in a way they're comfortable with, or sometimes just challenged with. Please don't write them off.
And to the older generation, those of you who struggle with gay people and the different values of the day. They're no different to you or I. A gay person is still afraid when they have faeces pushed through their letter box, and when their children are bullied at school. They don't like the derogatory terms used against them when they want to hold their loved ones hand or kiss them goodbye on the train station. They don't being spat on or threatened with violence just because they love someone. In short, the other is exactly like you. Only you've probably never experienced that, very few straight people have. And then there's the hate spewed from pulpits. Please stop that. You wouldn't like it and I'm pretty sure that Jesus said something about treating people how you'd like to be treated.
So let's just agree that we like different things. That none of us are 'normal' so that makes all of us normal. And we'll look more at this in the next article.
