Alex Lehr, Staff Writer
Words are like Halloween costumes: you can put one on anybody during a specific time and few will blink twice about the matter. Dressing up words nicely is what I am in school to do. My future depends upon my ability to seduce the eye with living words.
However, as I learn more and more about words and their hidden power, I analyze my world. Everything that is said will be said with a goal in mind. What are those goals?
One word in particular I find strangely misunderstood: bigot. What is a bigot, anyway?
If you go onto Wikipedia, you will most likely find the definition of bigotry to be this: “Bigotry is a state of mind where a person holds stubborn and complete views regarding other groups with fear, distrust, prejudice or hatred solely on the basis of ethnicity, race, religion, national origin, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, or other group characteristics.”
I hope all would consider this for a moment. It is a state of mind, absorbing one’s perception and interior motives. The stubbornness and absolute reinforcement of fear, distrust, prejudice and hatred are its accompanying wings.
Therefore, I address this to the world as a whole: what is a bigot, and how do we identify them for the rest of the world to see?
Is a bigot someone who follows God because following God is the right thing to do? Are they a bigot because they have a belief that another may not agree with? Based on what I’ve observed, in today’s society, bigotry seems to belong to anyone who dares to challenge conformity. This has to stop.
Hatred, bluntly, is easy to spot. Hatred is the Westboro Baptist Church. Hatred is driving people out of business with frivolous lawsuits just because they would not bake a wedding cake for an event they disagree with. Hatred, bluntly, is, by today’s standards, anything that makes the individual wholesome and personal.
If you Google “prejudice”, you will find that it states that prejudice is not based on reason. Why, then, are Christians who disagree with gay marriage based on their belief in God considered to be this? Is it because they have no “reason?” Last I checked, they did have a reason, and that reason is their faith.
Why have there been all these cases of couples trying to sue over “emotional distress” and other false, frivolous reasons just because they could not accept that one business does not follow their specific viewpoints?
Why did Charlie Craig and David Mullins use up precious time on this Earth to file a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission over Jack Phillips’s refusal to go against his faith by providing a cake for something he did not agree with? Bigotry, then, lies where?
To me, the hateful people are the ones who insist upon wasting their time and the time of others to try and drive innocent people out of business just because they got their feelings hurt. Is our country becoming so pathetic that we cannot physically function if a single atom of our feelings is unattended to? It is time for people to grow up.
Driving a family towards forced rehabilitation or loss of business when they have based their strength on their faith is disgusting. Equality, the strong pursuit of those who want to see gay marriage become real, is completely spat upon by people like these two men from the 2012 case. Equality has to run in both directions, otherwise those who demand it are hypocrites who contradict everything they and their fellow fighters stand for.
What is bigotry other than demanding a singular form of the chain? Those who claim to want equality for all must, likewise, pursue equality for all. Christians should have the right to deny people if it genuinely goes against their beliefs, and providing a cake to a same-sex marriage ceremony falls into that category. Why waste time trying to sue these innocents when the couple can find someone else to provide their food that will only last for one day of their lives? It is simply because we are obsessed with our feelings and not obsessed with logical, reasonable acceptance for true diversity.
If you want diversity, you have to open your mind not only to what people call “progression”, but also “preservation.”
I look at the news and quite frankly, I am sick to death of seeing victims like Phillips. I watch pro-lifers who detest the murder of an innocent child get beaten upon and cursed at. More were sexually violated during a protest in Buenos Aires by raging fem-nazis. To me, these are two evils of the same scope of misdirection: “My way or the highway.”
Tolerance has been forgotten among those who once screamed for it. They cannot tolerate that someone will not see as they do, and that they will continue to be faithful to God rather than give up their beliefs to pacify an angry crowd of true bigots.
I am against abortion and gay marriage both. To me, the former is murder and should never be the choice for anyone to make, and the latter I will always see as a violation of God’s plan. Marriage is just something between man and woman.
You will never see me beating up a gay, wishing death upon them or crying out for the blood of a woman who aborted her innocent. Neither so will you see me compromising my beliefs and advocating these things. I believe, as a Christian, that I must be there in these people’s lives, and that I have to have a presence. Friendship, indeed fellowship, does not require equal yoking. If that were the case, Jesus would never have walked into these peoples’ lives and transformed them. Christians need to surround themselves with people who are hurting and who need that extra presence.
This is my advice to all: Christian, never give up on your beliefs. The world will hate you for them and maybe even some day, we will be killed for them. Matthew 24:9 states this strongly. But your beliefs define you and your relationship with the Big Man Upstairs. Never hate these people for what they have done to you, your family or friends. Remember that we’re all on a battlefield, and we’re fighting a great war against the Fall.
Our army is made up of Christians, atheists, agnostics, pro-lifers, pro-choicers, you name it. Sometimes the war is civil. Other times, we are fighting against something so much bigger.
Bigotry is a word that must be learned for its true value, not its counterfeit. Remember that it is up to everyone to ensure that true hatred is dispelled, and that beliefs are definitions, not sicknesses.