So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." John 8:7
I always find this story to be one of the most intense in the bible.
I'm sure there are many LGBT people who have heard this same accusation placed on them, that "the sin for this punishment is death by stoning." The idea of stoning to death is so heavy for me as a gay man, and it's something that I fear every day I live. I fear that my expression of who I am is threatening my very existence here in the United States. We can talk all about those other countries, the ones where they speak differently, believe differently, and look differently and how they have so much intolerance, but I find much of that hatred to be mainstream here in a country I'm sometimes reluctant to call home. On top of there being this sort of animosity from the outside, I also feel uncomfortable (although not as much as to fear for my life) among people that I would love to call family: gay brothers and sisters, transgendered, non-binaries, people who don't fit in with the rest of the mainstream culture. Yes, as a Christian, I have felt much animosity, such as the questions, "Why do you associate with them?" or, "Why do you pray to their God?" or, "Isn't that just contradictory?"
I feel pelted, at the very least, by pieces of gravel on a constant basis. Sure, I'm not being killed nor tortured physically, and I pray that I never will be. Yet, I find the contradictions to be the same from two (supposedly opposing) sides: love is all, unless you're different.
If we look to the beginnings of Christianity, we find ourselves a man who was radical and odd. He opposed the teachings of the day, challenging the highest teachers. In fact, he would end up teaching them, and many would even be foolish enough (seemingly, at least) to follow after him. He claimed to know more than all the teachers from before - a man who doesn't even seem to have left us a written book. Yet, his message was the same: love one another. Jesus teaches us every day that we need to love one another as he loves us. He teaches us that we need to be there for all those in need, not just the ones who look and act as you do. He teaches us that we need to build up a community with love at the center.
As I have been getting more familiar and involved with the LGBT community, I have learned a few mantras that keep the community together, and the biggest one is: love. Yet, on the inside, I feel that many of those in the community have forgotten the first days of our revolution, the riots at Stonewall Inn. Trans women cried for all of us to love one another without judgment. But, today, gay Christians cannot be trusted nor respected. The color of your skin determines where you belong, whether top or bottom, masculine or feminine, skinny or fat, young or old. I find that our own community is hurling stones towards one another rather than making the world a better, more welcoming place.
This change, of course, doesn't happen instantaneously. In the story above, the people leave gradually, not all at once. I wonder how long the departure must have taken. How awkward was the situation? Where was the pile of stones? We may never know, but we do know that love prevailed in the end. Loving unconditionally requires each one of us to reexamine our lives, figuring out what things we have learned and/or taught ourselves are harmful to our community. It's only whenever we get rid of all those prejudices that we actually start to build up a meaningful community. When we focus our lives on love and not on judgment we start to forge strong relationships with one another, for those are manifestations of our love that we have.
