Okay, now I’ve made a point of not trying to be too overly political when it comes to the contents of my website. Yes, I have had banners supporting my candidate of choice during election time, but I’ve always stayed away from the idea of getting on my soapbox and preach my political beliefs. After all, the purpose of this website is about gay Christianity, but circumstances force me to publicly take a stand.

We are now living in very dangerous times. We have an administration in office that has done everything that the Republican party supposedly opposes, most notably in terms of a bloated government, and an interfering government. Even worse than that, there is now evidence which suggests that the leaders of our current government have some pretty strong religious ties, and are trying to rule and dictate policy according to those strong religious ties. I don’t know about you, but this truly frightens me. Still, is this enough to call into question what this government has done? Let me share some observations I have made recently.

Politically speaking I have always opposed the war in Iraq. Now that is my own personal opinion and I can respect the beliefs of anyone else who feels that the war was a good idea. That’s fine. What has been bothering me as of late is the reconstruction effort that’s been going on there, specifically, the money that has been poured into Iraq. The big American company that has been in charge of the reconstruction there is called Haliburton. What’s disturbing is that this is a company that has ties with VP Dick Cheney. This is more than just a conflict of interests. This is downright unethical! We live in a country where the fundamental conservatives are screaming about Janet Jackson exposing a breast and how it erodes the moral fiber of our country, yet nobody seems to mind the fact that our current administration is involved in the biggest money laundering scheme anyone has ever seen!

Now, let’s discuss 9/11. For the longest time I had always suspected that Bush knew fully about the impending attack by Al Quaeda, but I never believed that any evidence would come out. In recent days we have learned that German Intelligence had learned of the plans and even tried to warn us. We already know that an FBI agent learned of some impending attack, yet when he tried to warn others he was quieted. Why is this? Could it be that the administration wanted to establish a presence in the middle east and simply required a “tripwire” in order to make that happen? Now of course there is the brand new release of Richard Clark’s book about the war on terror and it doesn’t paint the Bush Administration in a flattering light. He confirms what has been said here so far. There has also been a report circulating around on the Internet called “The Project For The New America.” In there it maps out the eventual control of some very key countries in the middle east, including Afghanistan. It also states that in order for this plan to work what would be needed was another “Pearl Harbor.” 9/11 was certainly that. It not only gave the administration the excuse it needed to go in there and establish a presence, but it caused the American public to rally around the President and his decisions to go to both Afghanistan and later Iraq. The war against terrorism was merely the smoke screen so that the US could get its fingers into those key countries. 9/11 was the first tripwire.

The second tripwire, also sometimes referred to as the 9/11 of the airwaves, was Janet Jackson exposing her breast on national television. Was that scandalous? A little. Was it inappropriate? Most definitely. Does that justify this knee-jerk reaction we’ve been seeing in both broadcast radio and television? Absolutely not. I had pointed out earlier that the administration had some close ties with extremely fundamentalist Christian religions. Since history began, there have been fundamental factions in religion that demand the unconditional following of all people. If you don’t you are considered an infidel, and Christianity is not an exception. All we need to do is look at The Crusades and it’s clear that fundamental Christianity is equally as arrogant, not just in history but today as well. The fundamentalists have been wanting to push their agenda for the longest time, forcing people to think the way they think, live the way they live, and worship the way they worship. As far as they are concerned, there way is the only right way and anybody who worships God in a manner different from them needs to be squashed. For reasons which I’ve yet to comprehend, they are both threatened and personally offended when someone lives in a manner which is contrary to their personal religious beliefs. It doesn’t matter that they still have the freedom to worship and live the way they do without having their beliefs compromised. Their goal is to have everyone converted to their way of thinking and now they are one step closer to realizing that goal. After years of cozying up to the Republican Party they have finally forged what I view to be an unholy alliance. The Republicans like the way the fundamentalists think, and the fundamentalists covet the power the Republicans currently have. Together they are going to try to reshape the political, social, cultural and religious landscape of this country.

What is it that really started me on these issues? Gay marriage. Now I’ve seen much discrimination on so many different levels, from job firings all the way to gay-bashing. I’m pleased to say that up until now I’ve never really been in the receiving end of such discrimination. I’m one of the lucky ones. Recently though gay marriage has really taken on a life of its own. I had been watching it closely of course, and then something unusual happened. Not only were gay marriages being performed in San Francisco, but a gay couple that I have had both a very high respect for, and some modest level of fondness, actually received a marriage license. They got married!!! I was the first one to stand up and cheer for these guys. Jase and Eddie are two of the sweetest guys you could ever know and are in my opinion, the poster couple for gay marriage. Yet, for all of the happiness I had for them, I started to feel sick inside. I finally felt discriminated against. It was personal now. I was being marginalized because of who I love. Oh of course, there is political talk about giving us a compromise in Civil Unions. That’s just it. It’s a compromise. Civil Unions do not equal marriage. This is what I find so terribly offensive. Just because I don’t fit in with the government’s idea of what is moral or normal, they will pass legislation where I no longer qualify for equal protection under the law. Words can’t describe how this makes me feel. I don’t fit in because the Thought Police and the Government of Morality find me to be unfit.

What I do find fascinating is that we seem to be repeating what we as a country went through during the 60’s. We are entering into another cultural war. Back then there were conservative groups in power (the “authority”) on one side, and on the other were hippies, flower children, etc. History still treats them somewhat with scorn, but with everything going on now I’m beginning to think that maybe they were really onto something. They were rebelling against a restrictive, stifling governmental system. They wanted personal liberty and accountability, not someone telling them what to think and what to believe. They had a cultural war. Recently President Bush said, “We’re working to build a culture of life.” He said that while giving a speech to Evangelicals regarding the ban of gay marriage. That one sentence says it all. There is no separation of church and state anymore. We are now in another cultural war.

So why am I sharing all of this? Simply put, I’m getting involved. I find that I can no longer sit by and just watch what’s going on around me. I’m watching our government hijack the constitution and legislate what they wish, but even worse, I’m seeing Christianity hijacked. We have politicians who are using their own personal religious beliefs and using them to legislate morality, and they are all doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. More than anything else, this I find to be unbelievably offensive. My studies of the Bible don’t show me a Christ who imposed morality. The church of that day did a fine enough job of that! What Christ did (much to the chagrin of the church back then) was to give freedom and to point the hearts of the people to God. His mission was about having that personal relationship with God, not about the externals of how we live day to day. The same thing is happening today. We have the old, fundamental churches today telling us about how we need to jump through hoops, how we need to live a certain way just to please God. This way of living gets us so fixated on how we must live for God that we forget to let God live inside of us. Now we are seeing a revolution in the Christian world. There are new Christian churches that are realizing this. They teach us about freedom, liberty and personal accountability, not performing for God like a pet performing for its owner. This is a totally new way of thinking and worshipping today, just as the hippies and flower children had a completely new way of thinking and worshipping “the divine” in the 60’s. Just as there was a cultural war then, there is most definitely a cultural war now.

I realize that this entire “essay” of mine is incredibly long, but I felt it was necessary to share what has been brewing in my heart for the past several weeks. I only hope that what I’ve written here won’t go unnoticed, and that maybe, just maybe change can be brought about. The country is in deep trouble, and it’s up to us to do whatever we can to help fix it. Share your beliefs, feel free to express your disapproval of what the government is doing, and when the time comes, go out and vote and send a message to our political leaders that we are no longer tolerating what they have done and are doing, and that through the democratic process we have decided that they are no longer worthy of the special privileges they have. VOTE FOR CHANGE!!!

Let me leave you with this… In May of 1999, President Bush said that there are limits to freedom and people should remember that. During the Continental Congress of 1776, when it was suggested that liberty should be sacrificed for the sake of security, Benjamin Franklin said that those who are willing to sacrifice liberty for the sake of security deserved neither liberty nor security. Let’s not fall into that last category because we bought what Bush had to say about limiting our freedom.