If criticism of Christian bigotry was infuriating, that's as it should be

NEW BEDFORD

As a sports writer, I am used to name-calling. I am used to insults. I have been called a moron, a jerk, a fool, a bleeding-heart liberal pinko, and a lot of other unprintable things.

I have had my character attacked and my sanity questioned. Take your best shot, I always say. If you can't take the heat, et cetera, et cetera.

All that said, I was unprepared for the invective of some of the responses to a column I wrote on what I consider to be a hate campaign by the Christian right against homosexuals.

I expected flak. I expected ridicule. I expected anger. What I didn't expect, though I probably should have, was being called a hatemonger and a bigot against Christianity. That was a little upsetting, since hate and bigotry were the very things I was speaking out against.

And I am a little weary of being accused of half-truths and "historical inaccuracies." What historical inaccuracies, pray tell? What half-truths? Be specific, please. Peripheral sniping and righteous indignation do not alter the facts.

Fact: Christians did burn witches at the stake. I didn't say in Salem, where they only hung them, but Christians did barbecue witches. The following is from the Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (Second Edition), page 903:

"The Christian church persecuted witches from the 14th to the 18th centuries: under the Spanish Inquisition, up to 100 alleged witches were burned in a day; in 1692, 20 persons were executed as witches in Salem, Mass."

Fact: Christians slaughtered American Indians. I didn't say it was a religious issue. Indians didn't get that much respect from Christians. But Indians were still massacred by Puritans in Massachusetts and by the United States Army, which I think it is safe to say, was made up mostly of Christians.

Fact: Protestants killed Catholics and Catholics killed Protestants in Northern Ireland. To suggest that religious bigotry played no part in this madness is absurd.

Fact: Pope Pius XII never spoke out against Hitler or his persecution of the Jews. No amount of huffing and puffing is going to change that.

Where are the half-truths and the historical inaccuracies?

One letter-writer pointed out that some of the victims of the Ku Klux Klan were Christians. Hello? Is anybody home? Do you think the fact that they were black had anything to do with it?

But what really threw me were the charges that I am bigoted against Christians, especially since I based much of my argument on the teachings of Christ.

This may come as a shock to some people, but I am an admirer of Jesus, irrespective of his relationship with God. Besides the fact he had a lot of guts in taking on the Roman Empire and the Hebrew hierarchy, he was a blue-collar type of guy, a former carpenter, I believe, who would have been very comfortable in New Bedford. His disciples were fishermen and working-class people.

If he was to come back on earth today, you wouldn't find him in a three-piece suit, or in a limo, or in a mansion. You might not even find him in church, especially those new, rich, state-of-the-art monuments to Christian enterprise.

You would probably find him among the winos, the druggies, the hookers and the homeless. You would probably also find him among gay people, since gay Christians are unwelcome in most Christian churches.

One local man, who said my column infuriated him, told me that not all people who call themselves Christians are really Christians, to which I wholeheartedly agree.

I do not have a problem with true Christians, you see. My quarrel is with Christian bigots. I also have a quarrel with Jewish bigots, black bigots, Hispanic bigots, Irish bigots, Polish bigots, Italian bigots, Islamic bigots, Buddhist bigots, Hindu bigots, Indian bigots, sexist bigots and homosexual bigots.

But I don't hate any of them. I am not about hate. For one thing, it is unhealthy. It eats your insides out and causes high blood pressure and ulcers.

I don't hate people. I hate things, things that cloud people's minds and strip them of compassion. What I hate is cruelty. What I hate is hypocrisy. What I hate is bigotry.

If I offended some Christians by reminding them of the darker side of their history, so be it. You should be offended. Cruelty, persecution and bigotry should be offensive to all of us.

For those of you who wonder why I chose to invite all this criticism in defense of gays, I leave you with the following excerpt from a conversation in William Faulkner's "Intruder in the Dust":

"Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash; your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just refuse to bear them."

Bob Hanna is a staff writer for The Standard-Times.