First Of Two Parts
BY SHARON MARTIN
The most dangerous man in America thinks being gay is a choice. He believes the high rate of suicide among young gay people is because they are fighting nature and are in torment.
Doesn’t sound like much of a choice, does it?
He and others like him pile on the torment, telling them they’re going to hell. Conversion therapy and convincing them they are sinners is how they’ll save their souls. And if that doesn’t work, they kick them out of their churches, some even out of their homes.
That seems like an extreme way to help someone change his or her mind.
This dangerous man thinks Sodom and Gomorra were destroyed because of sodomy.
I read that story. If it’s about sodomy, why doesn’t it say? It’s a leap to say that the righteous man in this morality tale means heterosexual man. Burning the city is a radical way to deal with the lack of righteousness or homosexuality.
What about the righteous women? It leaves us in doubt about Lot’s wife. Why was she looking back? Did she know what was in store for her daughters, you know, the ones who bear their own half siblings because they’ve been taught that not having children is a greater sin than incest?
The dangerous man thinks abortion is murder. Every fertilized egg implanted in a woman’s womb must be born.
Rape? Maybe it was her fault. She shouldn’t have gotten drunk.
There are no Bible verses to protect a pregnant 11-year-old from incest or rape, just a dangerous man saying, “Keep sexuality out of the classroom. Let kids be kids.”
Except when they get pregnant?
The dangerous man doesn’t believe in sex education. He wants to see Planned Parenthood shut down. He believes cities are filled with “girlymen and metrosexuals.”
What is a metrosexual, anyway? A man who reads, perhaps? A man who thinks his partner is a whole person and not just a vessel? A man who believes women can make their own reproductive choices?
He’s one man, you say. Yes, one man, but he’s part of an army in this country, men who believe in the patriarchy. Women, too.
And they vote.
– Sharon Martin lives in Oilton, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer. Her latest book, Not A Prodigal, is available through Barnes and Noble. Her recent children’s book, Froggy Bottom Blues, can be purchased in hardcover or paperback from Doodle and Peck Publishingand in paperback from Amazon.
