My Faith Calls Me to Speak

I take issue with those who frame LGBTQIA2+ Rights as being against religion or anti-religious.

I am mindful that posting about controversial topics can be dangerous, yet there are times when one needs to speak out about critical conversations of faith.

I take issue with those who frame LGBTQIA2+ Rights as being against religion or anti-religious. As a Black transgender woman who is ordained clergy in the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, I find it problematic when faith and religion are positioned in an exclusive heteronormative cisgender political matter. I ponder a distorted moral narrative that sanctions this theologically dubious argument, affirmed by those who push anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation. Are religion and faith only credible when a conservative Christian baker or website designer has the desire to discriminate based on their religious beliefs? I know plenty of Christians who are transgender and same-sex couples who are just as religious and faithful as those Christians who use the Bible primarily as a tool to give credibility to their desire to hate, discriminate, and dehumanize beyond just sincere theological disagreement.

This continues a long and tragic strain of "faith" and "religion" used to legitimize the evil and its productions of the genocide of the American Indian, the enslavement of the African Americans, Jim Crow, lynching, Japanese Internment, the school-to-prison pipeline, and housing discrimination, ie., red lining, just to name a few. These represent twisted biblical interpretations founded in the slaveholder religion. Slaveholder religion was designed to give legitimacy to the enslavement of Africans for economic gain. This is the "faith" and "religion some conservative Christians profess. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court necessarily expresses this "faith" and "religion” in their decisions.

I cannot and will not separate the latest decisions of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court from this history they and their benefactors would soon have me and others forget. Their decisions bolster a "faith" and "religion" rooted in the slaveholder religion, making life more precarious and less free for those on the margins, such as the LGBTQIA2+ community. Their decisions give cover to those who desire to practice hatred, bigotry, and evil reminiscent of the Klan and Bull Connor. I ponder where these decisions come from. What is in their hearts? In this time of profound immorality, when care and concern, even hospitality, are not welcomed and diversity and equity are shunned by many, I ponder where the law begins and its purpose.

Isaiah 10:1-3 is a stern reminder that those who legislate laws that inflict suffering, pain, trauma, and cruelty on the needy, those on the margins of society, the working class, the disabled, and yes, the immigrant, will be held to account by God. It is a reminder that while I disagree with my fellow Americans, I must be more concerned with the wrath of God. We cannot let our passions get the best of us and risk the grace and mercy that hold this world, even this country, together. So while there may be sincere ideological differences, we should not allow those passions to overwhelm our reception of the love of God for our fellow human beings, also made in the image of God.

If I am to be in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ, I must, at all times and in all places, yield to the love of God that calls me to write this post.

Rev. Dr. Monica Joy Cross