Be sure to read Brandy’s post on the Equality Ride training (the post prior to this one). She has some great thoughts, great words and great feelings. I’m glad to call her (and all the others) my “fellow Rider” on this journey.

I cannot even begin to express in words all of the multitude of feelings and emotions I have after a week (well, almost a week, okay) of some of the most intense, intimate, intellectually and spiritually stimulating, emotional and loving experiences of my entire life.

Many of you have heard about my participation in the 2007 Equality Ride. Many of you learned about it in early December. Some of you heard me say I’d be on the Ride this year when I covered it extensively on the blog last year. I knew I was going on this journey a long time ago. Even if I had lacked the “proper planning” that I always put into my life and even if I had not “officially” become a Rider for 2007, I knew this was a journey I would be taking as far back as last March.

Last Wednesday, I boarded an airplane in Greensboro, NC, headed to Austin, TX, thinking I knew what this journey was about. I knew the history of the Civil Rights Movement, the LGBT equality movement and Soulforce. I knew the politics and the details of the many issues that go into LGBT equality. I knew this and I knew that. My expectations of what this Ride is really about, however, were totally, completely and utterly blown away by Sunday.

On Monday, I came home with such a deep sense of the real nature of this Ride. Yes, politics is an issue. Yes, activism is a part of it. Yes (I must be honest), my thoughts of “my future” are involved (yeah, yeah, yeah… we all know this is a great opportunity).

However (as I sit here on the verge of tears because I know what I’m about to type), this Ride – this Journey – is about nothing but the people. The people who are suffering at the hands of teachings, doctrine, institutions and “religion” that teaches they are sick and sinful, that tells them they are bound to hell, that tells them they are not loved, accepted, or a part of anything… A total way of mis-guided and misinformed love that tells them that God is their enemy and they must change and deny their very humanity and existence in order for Him to love them.

I could sit here and go over the details of what we learned – the Biblical exploration & academic side of this training – but that would do no justice to the true point of this Ride.

On Saturday morning, the Reverend Mel White, Soulforce founder and former “ghost-writer” for the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, spoke to all 56 of the Equality Riders. After showing a brief multimedia presentation of the history of America’s quest for equality and liberty (as well as the history of Soulforce), Mel did not hesitate for even one moment to tell us what I think is probably the most important lesson I learned from this training: Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all bullshit. All of it. Politics, history, group dynamics, ego’s & “our futures.” None of that matters when you consider the real faces and the real people, the suffering, the oppression & the lack of love & hope which emanate from lives full of being cast out and sidelined in the name of God.

Mel told us two stories I don’t think I will ever be able to forget. He once received a letter from a young man – an artist. Included in the letter was this young man’s story of growing up gay and in a place where he was constantly told that he could not be loved by God or by others unless he changed. Along with this, the young man told of his story of attempting to change himself – through ex-gay therapy – so that he might be loved and accepted by his Creator. Inside the envelope was a check, made out to Soulforce, for, well, a good sum of cash.

Although so full of great giving and compassion for a movement which could have changed the future of so many LGBT people, this young man’s letter and check would be serve as this young man’s “last words.” The letter was a suicide note. Soon after sending it, the young man killed himself; for him, change was too late. For him, hope had already come and gone and it passed him over. For him, all of the love he could have felt and all of the work that we could have done to save him had all come too late. Words of “love the sinner, hate the sin” had taken its toll.

Mel’s second story was of a pianist at a church where he once was involved. The pianist experienced a life and story similar to that of the young man. One day, at the church, the pianist walked into the sanctuary, holding a bloody towel between his legs. Because he could not change himself and get rid of his “sin,” he had done the only thing he could think of. For the sake of “receiving God’s love,” the pianist had castrated himself.

Our movement comes to late to save so many people. Our movement and our communities have failed so many people in the past. WE MUST NOT FAIL ANYMORE. Everyday, our world loses 4 LGBT youth because they grew up being told that unless they changed they would never be accepted or loved by God.

A lot of people question the motives and the strategy of Soulforce and of the Equality Rides. The motives and strategy are pure and of the utmost importance: The source of all this suffering, oppression, lives lost and lives destroyed comes directly from the pulpit and directly from religion. In confronting religion-based oppression and cutting off the prejudices and the hate before it has the chance to infect the mind of a parent, teacher, divinity student (and future pastor), politician and others has the ability to save thousands – if not millions – of lives which would otherwise be lost.

There is no love in a “love” which claims that one must forsake true self and life. There is no love when one says, “love the sinner and hate the sin,” for one cannot love God and hate their brother (I John 4:20); for one cannot deny the humanity, divinity and existence of another “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14) in the “image & likeness of God” (Genesis 1:26-27); for one cannot uphold “the law” without love, for “the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14 [Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31]); for one cannot cast out, because in so doing one also casts out Christ (Matthew 25:40, Matthew 25:31-46).

It is a theology of “particulars” which guide prejudices and hate and therefore the propagation of beliefs which can rationalize and justify those prejudices and hate through Scripture. As the fundamentalist movement took hold, theologians in American began to use Scripture to justify slavery. James Henley Thornwell was one of those theologians who “developed a form of biblical interpretation according to which the particulars of Scripture take precedence over the general principles… including the Gospel of Christ.”¹

At the same time, however, Christian abolitionists began to see Christ and Scripture in a new way. Appealing to the “Bible as a whole,” Christian abolitionists framed their feelings and positions on the existence of slavery and bondage by seeing in Scripture a “priority to its central themes, especially that Jesus was the central figure in the Scripture and that he had always displayed love, which required remedying injustice for those who were oppressed.”²

It is with the latter understanding of the love and will of God, as well as the Gospel of Christ, in which this movement – Soulforce & the Equality Ride – finds its primary, underlying principles and driving forces. Along with the principles of non-violence and Satyagraha (”truth-force”), we understand that the Gospel of Christ is one which, over “all the law & prophets” (Matthew 22:40), teaches that the true nature and will of God is one of love and mercy.

As I understand it and feel it, the efforts of Soulforce and the Equality Ride goals of ending religion-based oppression and injustice, can best be related to an argument once made by John Rankin, a Presbyterian abolitionist, on the merits of Christ’s love in relation to slavery and bondage:

The whole Bible is opposed to slavery. The sacred volume is one grand scheme of benevolence. Beams of love and mercy emanate from every page, while the voice of justice denounces the oppressor, and speaks to his awful doom.”³

Presybyterian theologian Jack Rogers states that in the history of the church in America, a “clear pattern” emerges in the every case of oppression in God’s name, whether it be directed toward positions on race, the role and place of women or the current state in which we find ourselves dealing with the issues of the role, place and humanity of LGBT people:

1. “The Bible records God’s judgement against the sin of [those of African descent, women and homosexuals] from their first mention in Scripture;”
2. “[Those of African descent, women and homosexuals] are somehow inferior in moral character and incapable of rising to the level of full [heterosexual, white male, 'Christian civilization;'" and
3. "[Those of African descent, women and homosexuals] are willfully sinful, often sexually promiscuous and threatening, and deserve punishment for their own acts.”⁴

I realize I am no Biblical or Scriptural scholar. I fully realize that my understanding of the “particulars” may not be as thorough or profound as a divinity school or seminary department chair. What I do fully understand, however, is that the Gospel and power of Christ compels each and every one of us to love unconditionally, without limits or bounds. We are called to rejoice in the fact that we are all brothers and sisters – children of the same all-powerful, all-knowing, all-merciful and all-loving Creator.

My task on the Equality Ride will be one in which I will full-heartedly devote my entire self to the force of truth and love which exists in the Gospel. The students at these religious schools, these centers of hate disguised as love, deserve to know one unadulterated truth: “God loves you and God affirms you without reservation.”⁵

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Footnotes
1. Rogers, Jack. Jesus, the Bible & Homosexuality. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press) 2006. pp. 21-22.
2. Rogers, p. 32.
3. Rogers, p. 32.
4. Rogers, pp. 33-34.
5. Quote, Jake Reitan. Equality U. Eyethink Pictures, Burlingame, CA. 2006. http://eyethinkpictures.com/EU_BYU_Video.html

Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright 1989 by th Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Church of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission.