Recently I posted a Facebook update. It was the same as the title of this blog post, but in all caps.
God is not heterosexual.
I got a variety of responses ranging from clever to honest to humorous, and mentioned that I'd post a response when I was feeling less ranty.
This is that response... And it's not very rantless.
First, a few notes and terminology matters.
I'm not a Christian. It's vital to understand that. I am not a part of any Christian denomination... But I have been. I was a quietly devout Anglican when I was younger, and having grown up in working-class white Australia there has been an undercurrent of Christian values throughout my life - including the stereotypical view on gay love and sex (ie. that it's bad).
I was persecuted for being gay for the majority of my schooling life. From grade five until the day I left high school - year twelve - I was harried, bullied and ridiculed on an almost daily basis for my sexual identity. The real kicker is that I'm not gay, nor have I ever identified as such. Nonetheless I have experienced a great deal of hostility and derision at the hands on my peers despite any kind of truth or reality. In addition I am bisexual, so I've experienced a lot of uncertainty about my own sexual identity, and experienced ridicule from both heterosexual and homosexual people for who I am. Make no mistake: gay people aren't better people. They're also not worse people. They're just different people.
I approach my understanding of religion and spirituality from a long, if somewhat haphazard, process of self discovery. I use terms like 'God' only for the sake of simplicity, to refer to that overarching Something that people either worship, ignore or revile. It's that thing people call God, Allah, Divinity and innumerable other names. I refer to it as the Divine Source personally. Many people don't consider it to be divine, or even to exist, and that's fine. This post is aimed at the people who do believe in that Something. So if my use of 'God' as shorthand offends you... Tough. It's a lot easier than typing 'that source, deity or essence at the heart of most major forms of worship' each time I refer to it.
This post is directed at those people who believe that sexuality has a prescribed 'correct' value as defined by above-mentioned source (God), and that other forms of sexuality are somehow 'incorrect'. If you're an atheist then welcome to the party, but realistically you don't have an excuse to believe that heterosexuality is 'right' and all other forms of sexuality are 'wrong'. If you want to argue nature has prescribed us a heterosexual existence, then realize that nature has produced everything from non-sexual beings (like amoeba) to hermaphroditic beings (such as snails) to beings capable of heterosexual or homosexual pairings (like the bonobo, which is as closely related to humans as the chimpanzee, and shares more physiological characteristics with us than chimps). Do your research before casting judgement.
No, this is aimed at believers and, as such, will likely change absolutely nobody's mind. But it pisses me off to see people whining about God as an excuse to express their unreasoning and bigoted hatred of people living in non-heteronormative ways - or people who DO live thusly -, so I feel Compelled to post.
Yes, religious-based gay-bashers. That's you. And you religious-based hetero-bashers, it means you too. You BOTH disgust me.
Now that we have that out of the way, here goes.
God is very commonly described as ineffable. That basically means that it is impossible to comprehend God. 'Ours is not to question,' is a term that almost every child brought up in a religious context (ie. almost every human on the planet) has heard with varying shades of emphasis.
Almost all people who describe God as ineffable then immediately go on to describe the varying traits and opinions of God. 'God loves this, God abhors that, God made us in His image,' and so on. For an ineffable being there are certainly a lot of supposedly defined traits for this God.
In the face of this blatant hypocrisy there are four immediately obvious explanations possible. The first is that God doesn't exist. We will purposefully ignore that option because as has been already stated this post isn't about atheism.
The second is that people are wrong or lying when they say that God is ineffable, and that people can eff Him just fine. This is... Unlikely at best.
The third option is that He is in fact ineffable and that these traits are erroneous, assumed or both. If He is, in fact, ineffable then logic dictates that this is in fact the only possible option (assuming God exists, and we are assuming that for the moment).
The fourth is that both God's ineffability and His explicability are entirely fabricated, and that we are told these things for extremely specific reasons. This is really just a subset of option three, blended with a dash of option one, because if He is neither explicable nor inexplicable then He probably isn't real. So we'll ignore this option as well.
Now. Logic time.
If God can be defined then He is not inexplicable. This means that people saying He IS ineffable are trying to avoid defining Him. The two most likely reasons for that are that they don't like all of what they find within this supposed Definition of God, or that they personally don't understand Him and would rather not be asked tricky questions that can't be answered, thanks very much.
Both of those options are overarched by a question that has plagued people for time immemorial, and that has only three answers: Why, if God is quantifiable, do so many millions and billions of people disagree so strongly about Him?
Those answers are as follows: He doesn't exist (ignored for now), or; He actually IS ineffable, or; one group has got it 'right' (or at least 'more right' than anyone else) and everyone else is 'wrong'. As nobody has any reason for believing they're more right other than 'this book says so' or 'because we say we are', and almost (but not quite) all groups claim that they, and not others, are the 'more right', we will likewise ignore this option on the grounds that it is unresolvable subjective opinion.
We come back to God being actually ineffable. But if He IS ineffable why do people claim to understand so damn much about what He wants? Because a book says so? Everyone seems to have some kind of book or vocal record or tradition and even if they didn't there's the remaining issue that you can't define something that defies explanation. So the only thing that these ancient traditions and tomes really conclusively prove is that the matter of God's definition and/or the impossibility thereof has been a point of contention for a VERY long time.
So, God's ineffable. Let's roll with that. Let's think about what that ACTUALLY means.
It means that all of these ideas as to what God is or isn't must have come from somewhere, must have some purpose beyond saying 'God doesn't like this, He wants that.' But really, that's opening a conversation about control and the reasons for it, and the purpose of this post isn't to define what God IS, it's to face the illusions if what He is and put some perspective on them.
People argue as to what God is or isn't, but one thing that most fully agree upon is that God is infinite, eternal.
But what does that mean?
God is not heterosexual. God is not male. God is not female. God is not gay, or white or black, or old or young. God is neither merciful nor wrathful. God is not loving; God is not unloving. God doesn't play favourites, not even in favouring humans above, say, boll weevils. God is not your Heavenly Father; even if 'He' is the great Progenitor in something called Heaven then that just makes God your Heavenly Maker.
If God is infinite, and as we're assuming God exists we can also assume God is infinite as it's one of the only things about God that religious folk can actually agree on, then that means that ANYTHING limited or finite prescribed to God must logically be both correct (as all things finite must be within any infinite thing) and incorrect (as any infinite thing must therefore be everything AND its opposite).
Is this making your head hurt? Of course it is. WE are finite minds. Whether our souls are finite or not our human existence most certainly and confirmably is. That means we can't possibly, by very definition, comprehend an infinite thing - we CANNOT comprehend God, and anyone who says we can is lying, mistaken or an atheist. All these traits we place around God are only feeble and doomed attempts to make God more comprehensible and acceptable and comfortable to our limited minds. They're not 'fact'.
So all of these opinions as to what God is or wants are...
Yeah, you know the word...
Assumptions.
Guesses, if you like. All the religions in the world are guessing and hoping they're right. And as proving the non-existence of an infinite thing is also impossible that means all the atheists are just guessing, too.
What this means is that using God as an excuse to condemn people who live in a way that you don't like is both erroneous, and 'Gay people are wrong because I assume that God doesn't like it because that's what my minister guesses and it's written down in a book so it must be a pretty GOOD guess' is a flimsy argument indeed.
I'm not saying God exists. I believe in a Divine Source.
But I am saying that if you claim to 'know God' you're sorely mistaken. You cannot. God isn't IN all things. God IS all things. If God is infinite then that must be true. So if ever you say 'God says we must do this,' or 'God says those people are bad,' remember you are wrong. That's just what YOU want, what YOU think, and you're using religion as an excuse.
And if you can accept all that then maybe it's mirror time. God doesn't hate gays/heteros/Islam/Americans - you do. What are you scared of? What's threatening you?
Think about it. And remember that it's YOUR mind... And you can change it.
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