My heart is just breaking.  A man walked into a gay nightclub and killed 50 people and wounded at least 53 more.  Total strangers.  Not in a war zone, not in defense.  Simply because they were gay and living out loud.

They say they believe he is Muslim.  But, that doesn’t matter.  I have heard enough from the Christian pulpit saying as well that gays should be killed.  And from many other religions.

Why?

Why can’t the religious people just not allow people to live on their own terms?

Why must they spread fear and hatred and death?  And yes, I hold all the religious people responsible that condemn those that are different.  Whether you pull the trigger yourself or not, you hold a responsiblity.  You feed the anger, the hatred.

Why must people hate anything that is different?

When you call a Trans person a pedophile, you feed the hatred.  When you call a gay an abomination, you feed the hatred.  When you call an atheist a blight, you feed the hatred.  When you excuse the rapist, you feed the hatred.  For every time you speak such words, you strip a bit of the humanity that that person has.  You make it far easier for the gunman to justify his actions.  For your words of hatred tell him that he is doing humanity a service, that he is a hero.

Your religion doesn’t make you a better person.  It doesn’t give you the right to stand in judgement.  It doesn’t give you the right to pull the trigger or throw the punch.  I really don’t care if you keep your religion.  Just keep it held deeply to your breast.  Its judgement applies only to you.  Not to your neighbor or the man or woman in the next city or across the country.  Your color doesn’t make you better.  It just means you maybe burn easier.  For, under the skin, we all bleed the same blood.  We all have the same organs.

And if your religion tells you to kill, to demean, to hate, to disenfranchise, to discriminate.  Maybe you might want to rethink that religion.

My son is gay, so this hits me very hard.  My son is an amazing person.  The world is a better place for him being here.  His gayness is simply who he is drawn to.  The beauty of his soul is his gift to the world.  The brilliance of his mind is his gift to the world.

If your religions believe he is wrong, then I wish you the most Godspeed to any God or Hell that may await you in the next life.  And if your God, if he exists (which I don’t believe he does)  truly finds my son and others like him to be wrong, then I hope that karma finds a way to send him to the deepest bowels of his hell to be food for his demons.

And now I shall listen to John again.  He seemed to understand better 45 years ago than we do now.

Sephi PiderWitch
06/12/2016