Is Sexual Orientation a Human Right Or a Sin?

The sentencing of Dharun Ravi for the
hateful abuse that may have driven his gay roommate at Rutgers, Tyler
Clementi, to commit suicide, or Barack Obama’s public acceptance of gay
marriage, prevents many of us from seeing that life for gays, lesbians,
bisexuals and transgender people is getting worse—much worse.

No one understands this better than the gay
activist and pastor Mel White. White, along with his husband and
partner of 30 years, Gary Nixon, founded Soulforce,
an organization committed to using nonviolent resistance to end
religion-based oppression. White and hundreds of Soulforce volunteers
protest outside megachurches that preach hatred and bigotry in the name
of religion. White travels to communities where young gays, lesbians,
bisexuals or transgender people have committed suicide. He holds
memorial services for them in front of the church doors. He accuses the
pastors of these churches of murder. His books “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America” and “Holy Terror:
Lies the Christian Right Tell Us to Deny Gay Equality,” are two of the
most important works that examine the innate cruelty and proto-fascism
of the Christian right. White, more than perhaps any other preacher in
the country, has pulled young men and women back from the brink of
despair, from succumbing to the tragic fate of Tyler Clementi. And White
is scared.

“What kind of environment creates a Dharun Ravi
who would carry out that kind of bullying, as well as a kid like Tyler
who would become a victim of that kind of bullying?” White asked when I
reached him by phone at his home in Long Beach, Calif. “It is society.
At its heart it is the church. The churches should be convicted, not
just Ravi. He’s just an extension of the hatred that people feel about
this threat, this gay threat. Pope Benedict XVI should be on trial. Richard Land
from the Southern Baptists should be on trial. Religious leaders,
Protestant and Catholic, should be on trial. They made this happen, but
too few Americans make the connection.”

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