I joined a new religion.
This religion makes me feel better than I ever have. I feel so loved just as my imperfect self is... well ...maybe not just as I am. I learned that having blue eyes is a sin. That in order to be loved by God I must have eyes that do not resemble the sky or sea. Such eyes are evil. There are a few verses in the Bible that have been interpreted to say this. Blue eyes mean I possess evil inside me and could cause others to have impure thoughts. So to be clean and born again, one must have darker eyes. I was completely broken hearted that I would never be loved as one of God’s divine creatures as long as my eyes remained as he had given them to me, blue.
I felt like I would never be accepted in the church because no matter how hard I prayed, my eyes remained blue. I spent hours on my knees everyday. I fasted and I punished my impure self. But no matter how much I tried to atone for how I was born, I was not graced with the blessing of having nonblue eyes. How could this be? Surely it was because I was unworthy.
My fellow church members told me they loved me but they didn’t love the sin of my blue eyes. They said I simply wasn’t trying hard enough to change. I needed to work harder to rid myself of these abominations. I was at my wits end. I was told I should consider a type of therapy where physicians put daily injections into my irises to transform them into the desired color. This scared me. I knew this was a very aggressive treatment and could leave me permanently scarred. I still wanted so badly to be accepted as everyone else had been.
So I did something that I’m not proud of. I told my church that I was getting the therapy and that I wouldn’t be able to attend for a time. During the absent weeks, I got myself fitted for color contacts. I already had to wear contacts but one had to have colored ones specially ordered. I prayed that I would be forgiven for my deception but I couldn’t face my terror of becoming possibly blind by my other alternative. I continued to pray and fast that my eyes would change on their own and I wouldn’t have to do anything drastic. Yet, the evil remained inside me and reflected outwardly in the blueness. I returned to church with my colored contacts and pretended that I had been found worthy enough to be fully reborn with chocolate brown eyes. This pretending was difficult. The colored contacts constantly hurt and never felt right as my others had. But it did feel good to finally be accepted as .... me? Seems really ridiculous right? Because it is! A person’s sexuality, gender and sexual preference is just like their eye color. They are born the way they are. These things aren’t chosen therefore it can not be a SIN anymore than the color of your eyes can be! You don’t commit an act of choosing who you love or what gender you are. I mean after all, you see the same things happen in nature but I don’t ever hear that a bird committed a sin for being both genders. Thinking such things is as illogical as saying that I chose to have blue eyes and if I pray hard enough I can choose to have brown eyes.
Thinking that you’ve been chosen to help people see the err of such things, tells me that perhaps you have a strange need to want to keep yourself above others. A desire perhaps to be righteous while someone else is not. When I was direct about this obvious need I saw from someone I was told that I was judging them for judging those of the LGBTQ community. But I never claimed that I would remain quiet when I witnessed others being hateful and displaying clear signs of rankism. As said in an article from Psychology Today regarding those who are displaying homophobia and the like regarding the persons reasons for doing so- “They are excuses for putting people down and keeping them down so we can more safely exploit them in the future. Or, so they will not compete with us. Or, simply to feel superior.” (see #6 in how people use rankism https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/somebodies-and-nobodies/201002/what-is-rankism-and-why-do-we-do-it%3famp )
This toxic behavior can lead those who are receptive of it to self harm and even suicide. It can also lead others to violently attack someone because they have been taught to hate the different as something that is to be feared and evil. This is why it is not only wrong but dangerous to use religion to demean others for being born differently.
You cannot truly love someone if you hate a part of who they are. Being LGBTQ is a part of someone, not a choice. The choice part is deciding whether you love them as they are or feel the need to have them change the impossible. (Like my blue eyes) I personally chose love above all else. And this month is a month that celebrates Love!! Wishing you all a beautiful month of #Pride!
#PrideMonth #LoveIsLove
