A call for the church to be a safe place

Here we are again.

Over the weekend, a gunman entered a nightclub in Colorado and opened fire. Five people were killed, and another 17 were reported injured. The club appears to have been targeted specifically because it caters to the LGBTQ community.

The death toll isn't as high as at the Pulse nightcllub in 2016. Reports from Club Q indicate that a military veteran was at Club Q when the attack started, and with that combat experience, courage and help from other patrons, and some luck, they were able to stop the gunman.

As happens when these things do, there's the usual hand-wringing and the usual vapid offers of thoughts and prayers over the bloodshed. How could this happen? 

Really? Let me explain.

For the past several months, the nation has heard Republican politicians and conservative talking heads all over the country fret and fan the flames of moral panic over the transgender community, imagining unseen dangers in children attending going to the library for storytime with drag performers. It's a familiar political tactic from the Right. Create the sense that American values are under siege, so that riled-up voters turn out on Election Day. So Matt Walsh bemoans an imagined epidemic of genital mutilation. Jordan Peterson gnashes his teeth than Elliot Page, in the final stages of gender transition, had breast reduction surgery. Mixed with this pervasive outrage is misinformation that conflates gender care with gender transition, to spread the lie that children whose sex isn't being surgically reassigned are using litter boxes in the school bathroom because they think they're cats.

What's missing? Not a matter of perspective, but a matter of decency. People may claim that the conservative alarms are overblown but sincere, that there are legitimate concerns about the message being sent to children regarding sexuality and gender, and while "we may hate the sin, we certainly love the sinner."

You know what happens when we hate the sin but love the sinner? The "sinner" dies, that's what happens. They get beaten to death in Wyoming, they jump off a bridge in New Jersey to escape their tormentors, or they get gunned down while they're out having a good time with friends in one of the few public spaces where they feel free to be themselves unreservedly.

Do you want to worry about the message kids are getting? Worry about this one. For the past year especially gays and trans folk and their allies have been described as pedophiles and groomers, part of a satanic conspiracy out to convince innocent boys to change their sex just to play on the girls lacrosse team.

I for one am through entertaining such insanity with aguments based on science and medicine. It's past time for conservatives and especially conservative Christians to start answering for their bigotry. Teens who don't identify as the sex they were born as aren't sick. They aren't insane, possessed or even confused. But because of the culture war tactics conservative voices keep employing, those teens are at a heightened risk for bullying, depression, suicide and sexual assault. 

You want unnatural? You'll find it in places like Florida, where it's illegal for teachers to discuss gender identity or sexual orientation with teens who are struggling with being different and not measuring up to social expectations. You want sick? It's in the culture war politics of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who wants to fine or fire teachers who feel compassion for their lgbtq charges and try to help them. The message DeSantis and his GOP allies are sending? We don't want you to get help or express yourselves. We want you to be quiet, stay in your lane, and be who and what we say you are.  The inevitable end of this bullying? Dead teens.

In contrast with all this, the Bible presents us with a God who created Adam as nonbinary. It was only later that God removed the feminine aspect of his creation and gave her a life of her own as Eve. The Bible reveals a Creator who defies easy gender assignment. God creates both male and female in his image. He identifies as masculine throughout Scripture but in a stunningly beautiful image compares his relationship with his people to that of a mother nursing her child. 

The end result of the GOP campaign against the transgender ends in places like Club Q where people with easy access to guns, fed a diet of fear of paranoia, stand over the dead, believing the lie that somehow they have struck a blow for freedom and righteousness.

We serve a God who is holy and who commands us to be holy. He gave us an ethic to live by, a code of holiness that comes with a promise that if we follow it, then we will live and draw others to him. It's a line in the sand that he drew, and that line is clear: Love. When the bully comes for the weak, defend the weak. Take their part, hide them under your wings and face the bullies with the question every bully fears from someone with authority: "Is there a problem here?"

The church is on the wrong side of this fight. How will we stand before God when he calls us to account for our reckless and hateful language? Be thankful that God is merciful. If we repent, there may yet be time for us to be saved.