Pre Post 3: Christian Values Under Attack, by Christians

That sound bite I just linked you to is of Sr. Pastor Sean Harris of the North Carolina Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville.

This particular pastor's message is, in a word, scary. In my Post 2, I discussed why Christian extremism is just as bad as any other religious extremism. How it is dangerous for our country, as the radical right wing christian mentality is to push EVERYONE into believing as they do.

Well here is the kind of Christian I warned against. Pastor Harris warns his church goers to beat the gay out of their kids at an early age. If you see "limp wrists" beat it out of them, tell them to "man up" if it's a boy, or if it's a girl being tom-boyish make them wear make-up, tell them that they're a woman god made you that way and you should act like it. "Go outside and dig a ditch" is his answer to "curing" homosexuality.

Not only is he advocating child abuse and stigmatization, but indirectly he is also advocating bullying and the instilling of hatred of gays into children. If the answer to to curing homosexuality is to beat it out of the kids at a young age, to force gender role stereotypes on to kids, what is to prevent these kids after being abused from then abusing other kids who they perceive as also being gay?

The fact here is that this person's message, as I am want for calling him the title of pastor, is contradictory to Christ's message and ultimately is harming both the child and then the children around them. And what happens if these christian parent's do beat their kids for being homosexual? Childhood trauma of any kind is shown to cause future psychological issues. Regardless of it was physical or mental abuse.

While dozens of studies are done and have been done in the past on the matter of child abuse and later psychological issues. This study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230877/
Psychological Distress Following Suicidality Among Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youths: Role of Social Relationships (Margaret Rosario, Eric W. Schrimshaw, and Joyce Hunter) illustrates the extensive psychological issues that gay, bi, and lesbian youth (transgender not withstanding here) youth experience. Including the higher risks of depression, suicide, and aggression that LGBT youth tend to exhibit.

LGBT kids, according to the study, who were at one time suicidal exhibited higher levels of suicidality in relative to their social relationships. Kids who were in a very supportive and caring environment, had good friends and otherwise a wide range of social support and acceptance had far lower incidents of suicidality than kids who had abusive parents, had few friends, and/or were ostracized in public situations for their sexual orientation.

This Pastor, knowingly or unknowingly is advocating for an increase in suicide rates among gay teens. He is instructing parents who seem to think their kids are exhibiting "gay signs" to beat and harm their kids to "make them straight" and in doing so instructing these same parents to do the very thing that cause high rates of depression, suicidality, and anger in kids, regardless of if they are gay or not.

From the study linked above "Abstract
Longitudinal relations between past suicidality and subsequent changes in psychological distress
at follow-up were examined among gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) youths, as were psychosocial
factors (e.g., self-esteem, social support, negative social relationships) that might mediate or
moderate this relation. Past suicide attempters were found to have higher levels of depressive
symptoms, anxious symptoms, and conduct problems at a later time than youths who neither
attempted nor ideated. Psychosocial factors failed to mediate this relation. The interaction among
past suicidality, social support, and negative relationships was associated with subsequent changes
in all three psychological distress indicators six months later. Specifically, high levels of support
(either from family or friends) or negative relationships were found to predict increased
psychological distress among those with a history of suicide attempts, but not among youths
without a history of suicidality. The findings suggest that GLB youths who attempt suicide
continue to have elevated levels of psychological distress long after their attempt and they
highlight the importance of social relationships in the youths’ psychological distress at follow-up."

In the paper Does bullying cause emotional problems? A prospective study of young teenagers
(Lyndal Bond, head, research unit (bond@cryptic.rch.unimelb.edu.au)a, John B Carlin, director, Lyndal Thomas, PhD scholar, Kerryn Rubin, medical student, George Patton, director) comes to a very specific conclusion: "A history of victimisation and poor social relationships predicts the onset of emotional problems in adolescents. Previous recurrent emotional problems are not significantly related to future victimisation. These findings have implications for how seriously the occurrence of victimisation is treated and for the focus of interventions aimed at addressing mental health issues in adolescents." (http://www.bmj.com/content/323/7311/480)

Can you imagine, if child on child bullying in a child's adolescents can cause lasting effects on that child well into their teenage years and beyond, what is the effect of parental bullying at the same period in the child's life?

Despite all evidence that we have from the past twenty years; of abused kids who have killed themselves, killed others, and reacted poorly to both mental and physical abuse by parents and other kids, this so called christian pastor  is advocating for abuse to correct a perceived problem.

A perceived problem that can't be determined by if your son has a "limp wrist" or if your daughter "likes to play sports". In fact, there is no scholarly work that shows you can tell if your kid will be gay or straight until after they've gone through puberty and start exhibiting attraction towards a gender.

That of course doesn't mean there aren't people who push the message you can and that you can "cure gayness". A simple google search for "How to tell your kid is gay?" gets you thousands of "answers". While a few of them are seemingly positive, like the PFLAG site discussing how to support your teen if they're gay, many are either intentionally funny, or seriously discussing how to "cure" gayness.

This comes to a much larger question; Is homosexuality a genetic trait or a learned trait? The fact is that pretty much all science on the matter, every peer reviewed studies, show homosexuality and transgenderism to be a genetic trait. Recent studies show that the trait maybe in part caused by in vitro hormone levels. That said, most of the claims that it isn't a genetic trait are false. There are not any studies that show it to be a conditioning to be gay. Gay parent's can't turn their kids gay.

The presumptions of christian groups like Focus in the Family,  Abiding Truth Ministries, American Family,  Association, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, that homosexuality is fixable or changeable and that gays are the people behind the Nazi Party, or somehow live drastically shorter lives than straight people, are all lies.

Any source of information found here http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/the-hard-liners isn't to be taken seriously in any sense when it comes to their edicts towards homosexuality. But what is noteworthy of all of these anti-gay hate groups is that they are all Christian.

So now, I leave you with one last thought, if these people are christians, if they profess the teachings of christ, how are they committing themselves to these ridiculous claims and offensive hatred? How is a Senior Pastor of a Church teaching his followers in his church to bring harm to their child, which as I've shown you above, can lead to many more problems in life, to stop them from being gay? How are they teaching something that goes against the teachings of their god as set down in their bible?

To me, there is no answer for this, beyond stubbornness, hatred, and cherry picking the bible to support a radical point of view.
If you are reading this, ask yourself this: Do I want people who are blind to their own faith being the basis for this country as they claim their religion is? Because I know I don't. I know I want fair logical minds to be the leaders of our country. I want clear heads not inundated with religious rhetoric to be the one's to make our laws and to enforce our rights.

Thanks for reading.

Lord Kristoffer Martin