Originally published 3/22/16
What's up with all the hate? My white skin does not affect your life. Your black skin does not affect mine. The fact that I am married to Michael does not affect anyone's life. The fact that Warren loves Walker does not affect my life. The fact that Barack Obama is black does not affect his ability to be President. The fact that Hilary is a woman does not affect her ability to run for President. Haven't we fought those battles already? Women got the vote in 1920, the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination in 1964, and gay marriage has been legal in most states since, well, last year. Ok, that one's a bit new, but come on! Yet here we are, in 2016, and a rural Tennessee community is spewing hate and judgement as teenagers struggle to be comfortable in the skins God has given them, and, on the national stage, Donald Trump drives legions of white men into a racist-hating, women-bashing, violence-promoting frenzy.
Students, parents and community gather at Franklin County High School in Winchester, Tn, to show support for the Gay-Straight Alliance at FCHS. Some members of the community want to disallow the club.
People everywhere are hating things that don't even matter, things they have no control over: the color of someone's skin, the body parts between someone's legs, and where they want to put them. Who cares? Why do people get so venomous about things they can't control about themselves, or about someone else? The school board in Franklin County, TN, met recently to discuss policy regarding school clubs. It is a thinly veiled effort to disband the Gay-Straight Alliance, a new club formed in January at this rural high school. As the board sorted through policy changes designed to make life difficult for club sponsors as well as school administrators, a board member interjected an off-topic question about sex education. "I just want to make sure that the school sex education policy is still to teach abstinence," he asked the director of schools. Even she was a bit befuddled by his straying question, but most of the spectators understood the fear from which his clarifying question came. He doesn't understand that you can't catch gay, that you can't be taught how to be gay. He probably thinks color rubs off, too. That may be why it's so dangerous for a man of any color other than white to go to a Trump rally that they assign visitors of color a security detail.
You can read more about J Troupe's story here.
He catches on video the hateful racial epithets chanted in response to Trump's senseless rhetoric.
So we have bigots on the stage of Franklin County High School, and bigots on the national stage. I don't know which is more frightening.
A therapist once told me that the things that bother us most about other people are the things inside us that we most dislike. My most favorite example is the 2007 story of Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican senator who loudly defended traditional family values (read: against gay marriage). Then he was caught tapping the secret code for wanna-hanky-panky-in-the-airport-men's-room. This theory of self-hate isn't reserved for closet homosexuals - just look at Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, both virtuous men of the Word who were later caught with their pants down. Literally. South Carolina's good looking Republican Gov. Mark Sanford was family man on the fast track to the White House, when he left his wife and four children to hike the AT, I mean, run away to Argentina with his mistress. To his credit, we have re-elected him, and he's actually made it back to Washington, just not the White House. Yet.
(Is it a coincidence that these are all men, and all Republicans? There is a study that shows slightly more Republicans have been engaged in sex scandals since 1974, but they are all men. But I digress.)
Just this morning two bombs exploded in Brussels, reportedly revenge for the recent arrest of an ISIS suspect in the Paris bombings. Why does ISIS hate Western society so much so that they have to kill people they don't know? Do they really want to be Westernized, for which they hate themselves?
Perhaps our odd human behavior can best be described by my favorite, most confusing, yet at the same time clarifying, passage in Romans 7:
For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. The war are are fighting should not be among each other, because it is within ourselves! We are all sinners, and we all do the wrong thing, think the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, wish the wrong thing most of the time. That's OK. It's on me, not you, and God, through his grace, will forgive me for it. Instead, people point their finger at someone else, another clinical behavior called projection. I project my sins on you by accusing you, therefore deflecting any discussion about my sins. Didn't your mother ever tell you, point your finger at someone else, and there are three pointing back at yourself. Do it. You'll see what I mean.
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