Anthony Venn-Brown: Problems & Concerns in the Anti Gay Marriage Camp

Anthony Venn-Brown: Problems & Concerns in the Anti Gay Marriage Camp

Anthony's commentary on the 2011 annual hatefest held in parliament house Canberra is both insightful and kind compared to some of the language I have seen used to refer to the vitriol spewed forth from the official speakers at the event this year.

The Mad Katter, Barnabyisms  and rampant homophobia were the fare of the affair.

AFA and ACL scored own goals once again thanks to the extremist attitudes spewed from their proponents.

Jim Wallace can I ask you to please invite Ms. Rebecca Hagelin to speak every year. She defines your argument so well. We really want people to hear her speak all over the country.


Love and Kisses

Stephen Smith, please support Marriage Equality

I am a Christian and I am Gay. I have spent a large portion of my life studying scripture and almost as much of that time experiencing a sense of condemnation and self hatred thanks to the homophobia and Judgemental teachings of blinkered single version bible bigots who followed discriminatory teaching about other human beings simply because their seminary promoted that teaching, or they didn't bother to do some serious research for themselves; they followed an ideology ignorant of science and dismissive of any learning that questioned their prejudice.

I spent years taking part in reparative therapy programmes like Exodus and their like. All of them were based on a lie that human sexuality is a choice and that all I had to learn was the way to make straight choices. They told me that I could be straight if I had enough faith; that my thoughts and feelings would change. But they lied.

I discovered over the 10 years i took part in these programmes that even the people who claimed to have been successful maintained a struggle with thoughts and desires for those of the same sex. Their thought processes had not changed; in fact they had simply learned to lie to themselves; I know there are many who have suicided and committed acts of self-harm as a result of such programmes around the world.

I eventually learned to accept myself and embrace my feelings when I learned that medicine had found that sexuality was something innate; a part of myself as integral as my hair  and skin colour. I had to wait until I was 31 to come to a place where I could be true to myself; the first step I believe God requires of every one of us in coming to him.

Even then I had to deal with my own internalised homophobia and at times felt unworthy to be able to even turn to God in my times of need. I found that I sought solace in more and more sexual encounters only to find the result was a deeper sense of emptiness.  Eventually I was diagnosed with HIV disease and even then in my distress felt that I was not welcome in the church unless I got my act together first; something I found both inhumane and now believe to be seriously un-Godly and definitely Un-Christian.

I was extremely lucky that even in what I believed to be my damaged; diseased state I found a wonderful man in Damian. Our friendship grew and 12 months later we were engaged and 2 years after we met we were legally married in Toronto City Hall, Ontario Canada. Just before leaving we had a service of commitment, conducted by an Anglican Priest, before 100 of our friends and Family. For our relatives and our friends the symbols and order of service was not very dissimilar to any other wedding they would have attended for heterosexual friends or family. They all understood the significance of the day and supported the declaration of our love for one another; as well as the type of commitment we were declaring before them.

Almost Ten years since we first met and Eight years since we were legally married we are more committed to one another than those years ago. Strangely, we have never met anyone who has condemned us for our relationship. Rather, we have had total strangers walk up to us to congratulate us on our relationship; to congratulate us for our commitment to one another. The greatest challenge we have encountered has been from petty, small-minded politicians, pandering to a minority of people calling themselves Christians; such as those heading up the ACL and the Fatherhood foundation.

Thirteen years after coming to a place of self acceptance later I finally found other GLBTI Christians who, like myself, believe that they are as God made them to be; that there is no person who could ever be good enough to deserve the love of God. That the key to the whole Christian relationship is that we are all there by God’s Grace; that the only one who has the right to judge any one of us is God and that the act of judgement by anyone but God is the measure that God will use to Judge them.

I have since been able to return to church, confident of God’s love for me. I attend Riverview Church in Perth, Western Australia; this is the church that I used to attend many years ago. It is also the church that originally ran the Bible college I attended in the 1980s; Rhema Bible Training Centre; I may have begun my studies there, but that is only where my hunger for God’s word started.

I am a well-respected member of the community. I volunteer as a Systemic Disability Advocate on a national level. I am the Deputy Chair of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations AFDO (I recently retired from the position of Chair which I held for 3 years.) I was appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council’s   AHEC, the Australian Health Ethics Committee 2 years ago. I am a member of the    board of governors of the Australian Council of Social Services, ACOSS; as well as representing People with Disabilities to Centrelink, FACSIA and the Australian Electoral Commission.  However, none of these things are as fulfilling as my relationship with God.

I am a fully qualified and experienced High school English teacher. I was chased from my career by unadulterated homophobia and underwent a constructed dismissal from my final posting in 2001 on the suspicion; not on any factual knowledge, of my newly diagnosed HIV status; a suspicion based upon an unacceptable level of homophobia in the 21^st century.

Since reading “what’s so Amazing about Grace” by Philip Yancey; “Love is an Orientation” by Paul Marin and a whole swathe of books which deal with the evidence of what the Bible actually says and does not say about homosexuality I have been able to grow in confidence of the Love God has for me and for my GLBTI Christian brothers and sisters who have been abused and maligned by those in the church who demanded they change before they would be welcome in God’s family.

I have not been blindly led by the opinions of others but have studied as I am required to do; as a member of the Body of Christ. I do not just take what a pastor or teacher says without question. Instead, I challenge opinion and position using the tools of context and history to understand what the scriptures really have to say to us in the 21^st Century. I agree that the bible is a God inspired group of texts that were written by men who felt compelled to have these words written down for the guidance those members of the church to come.

It is interesting to note that the book that is referred to as the Bible, or the Canon of scripture, is a particular selection of all of the writings of the early church. They were selected by the Church of Rome by men who held the prejudices believing that the world was flat and was the centre of the universe, that human slavery was acceptable and that same sex orientation was (and as they even say today) intrinsically evil. This is not strange from an organisation that ordered the crusades as well as the Auto de Fetes of the French inquisition; even worse than the Spanish inquisition.

The great moral challenge for the Church in this century is not an attack by GLBTI people. Rather, it is the hurdle that the fundamentally challenged face in understanding and accepting that their hatred and violent verbal, psychological and even in some cases physical remonstrations against people of same sex orientation are equal to the dilemma faced by the issue of human slavery toward the end of the 19^th and the first half of the 20^th centuries.

When those of the more fundamentalist arms of the organisation calling itself ‘the church’ come to realise that God will not be limited to their small & narrow minded view of Christ and Christianity then we will see a church more interested in meeting the needs of the hungry, the poor the sick and the homeless; instead of focussing on what two people who love one another do, or do not do, in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

We, as Christians need to remember that all of us fall short of declaring ourselves righteous, because we could never do enough to earn the Love Christ demonstrated on the Cross. His gift of the ability to go before God was and is so great, none of us will ever deserve it.

“Namely, the righteousness of God which comes by believing with personal trust and confident reliance on Jesus Christ (the Messiah). [And it is meant] for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and are falling short of the honour and glory, which God bestows and receives. [All] are justified and made upright and in right standing with God, freely and gratuitously by His grace (His unmerited favour and mercy), through the redemption which is [provided] in Christ Jesus,

Romans 3:22-24 (AMP)

So, does the fact that the right of GLBTI people to marry the person they love producing the kind of stable relationships that their critics continually condemn them for NOT having make their ‘Christian’ critics afraid that they will have nothing to use to attack them with?

Or, are they just more concerned with ensuring that their self-confessed homophobic reasons to deny legal state based marriage gives them the ability to distract themselves from looking at their own shortcomings; providing them with the opportunity to stand before God and say “thank you God for not making me like them”?

Either way, their justification for denying state recognised marriage from same sex oriented people is nothing less than facetious; a form of social elitism unacceptable in the Church, the true body of Christ, or society in the 21^st century.