A BYU-sanctioned panel last week put three homosexual students and one bisexual student in front of hundreds of faculty, staff, and other students to discuss their experience being gay at BYU. By most* accounts, it was a successful, calm, educational experience. Each member of the panel was able to talk about their own thoughts regarding their religion and the sexuality, and attendees were able to ask questions.
Around the same time, a video was released—in line with the It Gets Better Project—where several BYU students were interviewed and talked about their struggles, hopes, fears, etc.
Now, we here at Telestial State have made pretty clear our stance on the whole gay issue**, and we’ve presented all sorts of reasons and arguments as to why we’re right. We’ve talked about how it’s not the government’s role to regulate marriage, and how gay people aren’t inherently evil and should have all the same rights as non-gay people, and how (to borrow from a local celebrity) when it comes to hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm to gays, you should just fucking stop it.
But if you’re unsure about the whole gay issue, let this be a call to action about how we—as a society—need to get our priorities in order.
Let’s first care for all the teens and young adults who kill themselves each year because they don’t know how to cope with their sexuality.
Let’s first care for all those who feel trapped in “traditional” marriages, unable to find happiness despite their best efforts.
Let’s first care for the people who think an all-loving God includes a disclaimer about His affection doesn’t include a subset of people.
Once we take care of people—real people who have real hopes and dreams and lives they want to live—then we can worry about using government to circumvent a person’s right to choose in order to promote a precious social construct that has changed so dramatically even in the past few centuries***.
To all you people who talk about how awful homosexuality is, you’re absolutely right. It’s awful how people can’t be happy just because they want to fuck a different someone than you want to fuck.
It’s awful how someone’s personal preferences can transform their lives into a living hell.
It’s awful how religion is used to condemn instead of help and uplift.
If you think homosexuality is so awful and is destroying society, don’t talk to me about marriage and housing and employment and visitation rights until you’ve figured out how to ensure gay people can walk down the street and go to school and live their lives in peace—without worry about being ridiculed or abused or hated.
That hate is what’s really destroying society. The only thing gay marriage is destroying is your comfort level. And I’m fine making you a little uncomfortable if it means we’ll be finding fewer teenagers who have hung themselves in their closets.
**More specifically, the fact that it shouldn’t be an issue in the first place.
***I’m talking about marriage, in case you didn’t catch that.