Our Government is using religious persecution rather than the law to hold my people down. I was raised by a Pentecostal minister Mother who used that same bible to levy fear and control over me from as early as I can remember. My one hope during those years was that when I became an adult I would no long have that bible shoved down my throat. Now I have a President doing it.
Where do we find the difference in George W. Bush dictating to us that God doesn't want GLBT people to undermine traditional family values and Saddam Hussein ordering people killed for violating Allah's law? Religious fanaticism in control of Government is religious fanaticism in control of Government no matter what the penalty it is they think God would have them levy against us.
My hope is to once and for all stand up to my oppressing Pharaoh-like President, and with heartfelt conviction tell him to let my people go. As Americans we value the ring of true freedom. Disallowing us the pursuit of happiness is not affording us true freedom.
If we don't let the infinitely diverse harmony of freedom include everyone we will never realize the truly beautiful thing that that ring of freedom can be, and we are only paying lip service to freedom.
Our forefathers knew that religious dogma of any kind and government should remain separate to prohibit religious zealots from taking control of a country that was founded on the principle of religious freedom. The Bush administration has ignored these parts of our US Constitution at every opportunity. Many Americans agree with his moral judgment of us as a people, so they do nothing or stand and cheer, but what happens when he decides that only those who are Christians have rights, or only the Baptists have right?
I was gravely disabled by a Mother who used this same form of religious persecution to abuse me into compliance, and have been drawing SSI since 1979. I've been in and out of mental institutions due to suicidal depression caused by the same kind of religious abuse that our President and Governor are trying to levy against me now.
I was 19 when in 1979 I was first hospitalized, because I broke down when my Mother called my boss and got me fired from a live-in housekeeping job at a board and care home, by asking him if he was sure he wanted a lesbian working for him. She did this in the hopes that I would be forced to come back and work for her again.
I do have other serious issues such as recovering from 10 years of incestuous molestation from the pedophiliac step father that that same fine upstanding Christian woman decided to marry when I was 10 years old. I am also a survivor of an abusive Father who committed suicide while I was in protective custody due to that abuse when I was 7.
But according to my counselors it is my Mother's voice on the mental tapes that I continue to use against myself, in some sort of morbid attempt at a self flogging to atone for my sexuality. The pictures of Jesus Christ being tortured and crucified for someone who would prefer to be a sexual deviant than make his sacrifice worth while, that my Mother painted for me are still quite vivid and haunt me regularly, as do the thoughts of burning in hell for all eternity without the ability to slip into shock as she told me after a nasty burn I got from hot grease when I was ten.
Even through all of this I still try to follow the teaching of Jesus. He taught of love and acceptance of the love shown by anyone, like when he shamed his disciples for scorning Mary Magdalene. the "known" prostitute.
This is an attempt to find my voice when feeling like that child that no one was protecting when it most needed protection from those stealing its rights. This is part of me trying to stand up and champion that child. It is my way of doing my recovery work.
Please hear my voice. Those who are now supposed to be protecting me and all the other GLBT citizens of the United States from religious persecution by religious zealots, are not protecting us, and have, in fact become the perpetrators of the same kinds of crimes that put me in this mental state in the first place.
signed that wounded child.
she's the one in the middle.
If you'd like to stand behind her, you can drop an email to thank SF Mayor Gavin Newsom for his courage to stand up for her at gavin.newsom@sfgov.org
This is that same child now. What would you have done if you had grown up to be someone like me? Then what does God tell you to do?
