The First Stone
I’m back talking about my family. More history. Let’s chat about my youngest brother. He’s gone. Died in 2005. He was gay. This month is LBGT pride month, and I think about him a lot, but always during this month. We weren’t particularly close. He was twelve years younger than me. So, when I graduated high school and pulled up stakes, he was still a babe, and his proclivity wasn’t manifest. Wouldn’t have mattered and it didn’t, he was my brother, and again I never heard my parents talk about homosexuals just as I never heard them talk about blacks.
So, I pretty much grew into a live and live approach to life reenforced by those pesky gospels that talked about loving my neighbor, giving succor to Samaritans, and understanding that God was right there in the least of us. So, I didn’t understand then and don’t understand now how people can get so twisted off about homosexuality. Why did it matter so much that the British literally killed the man who helped them win World War II by breaking the Enigma Code, Alan Turing, simply because he was gay. That seems perverse and mean-spirited.
Granted, I don’t hear much talk among my friends about the subject these day but it’s out there in the public space. Lot’s of laws about transexuals and transgender folks. Seems an odd sphere for government for government to stick it’s nose. But there it is, stuck. And I think about my brother being in a persecuted minority simply because of the way he was born, and I think about being told we’re all born in the image and likeness of God, and I wonder how someone can square that up as they single out those they want to persecute.
Part 23, Living in America: An Old Man’s Journey into His Past