An Open Letter to Indiana

An Open Letter to Legislators and Business Owners in Indiana

Dear Sir(s) or Madam(s),

This is an open letter to legislators and business owners in Indiana regarding the religious freedom legislation, which may allow for discrimination against people, especially people from the LGBT community.  Now, it is possible that the recent law passed is NOT meant for this purpose, that it is truly a law protecting religious freedom.  I sincerely hope that is true.  As I was raised in a Mennonite church, I hold religious freedom and separation of church and state very dear to my heart.  When a person is raised on stories of martyrs and fiery deaths, she understands the need for free practice of religious faith.  So, I hope the Freedom of Religion Act is just what its name implies.  But, I doubt it.

This letter is specifically to the business owner who is planning to discriminate against people in the LGBT community on the merits of his Christian faith.  I have never met you.  I don’t even know if you exist, or if perhaps you are a figment of our fevered cultural imagination, born out of right-wing fantasy and left-wing fear.  No one in my wide circle of friends has EVER told me (to my face) that they felt that being gay was a sin, or that they opposed the right for two loving people to be married.  I have a pretty wide variety of friends:  straight friends and gay friends and some in-between, friends whose ages span between 70 years, friends who own guns and friends who protest the NRA, friends who hunt their own food and friends who are vegans, friends who drive pick-up trucks and friends who drive smart cars, friends who are Christian, atheist, Jewish, humanist, and pagan, friends who love Joe Biden and friends who love Sarah Palin.  Out of ALL of those people, NO ONE has ever told me they would not serve a person based on that person’s choice of partner.  So, perhaps you, the discriminating business owner, do not every truly exist.  But, if you do, I cannot be silent anymore.  Here are my two cents.

• If you believe that Christianity calls you to condemn consensual same-sex relationships as a sin, I think your theology is WRONG.  I may be a liberal Christian, but I’m not exactly a “progressive Christian”.   I, too, believe in the conception, incarnation, and bodily resurrection of Christ.  I, too, believe in the trinity.   I, too, hold the Bible to be sacred; I do NOT ignore the scriptures.  However, I do NOT believe that St. Paul, or the authors of the Old Testament, were speaking about two consenting adults engaging in a loving, respectful relationship.  The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah weren’t homosexual acts, they were rape and hateful treatment of a foreigner, someone different from the people in the town.  Did you get that?  Hateful treatment of someone different?  A sin?  Sound familiar, like not serving someone based on who they love? At the end of the day, Jesus called us to LOVE others, not judge others and I believe a loving God created each of us just as we are.
• If you still believe that same-sex relationships are a sin, how on earth do you get to judge?  Do you refuse service to alcoholics, adulterers, liars, cheaters, gossipers?  Christians accept the fact that we are all forgiven sinners, and that we should love rather than judge.  Honestly, most everyday sins (gossip, lying, self-centered actions) are much more hurtful than my friends who happen to love each other and live together in a committed relationship.  Seriously, if same-sex relationships are a sin, they are the ONLY sin I can imagine that hurts absolutely no one.  So, if you do not issue a lie-detector and morality test to all of your customers, refusing to serve someone who may be a “sinner” is surely discriminatory.
• If you say, “I hate the sin, but I love the sinner.”  Or you say, “Not accepting a person’s decisions is not the same as bigotry.  I can love someone and disagree with them.”  I say, “You are wrong.”  Of course, I love people with whom I disagree all the time.  I disagree over political decisions, choice of music, and whether green beans are fit to eat, and yes, I do love those people.  However, I do not insist that they abide by my opinion in our disagreement and seek to pass laws to enforce that.  Maybe I even love someone who is stuck in destructive behavior, like addiction, and I disagree with their actions.  However, I do not tell them that their entire being is an abomination, that their innate sexual desire is wrong, that the person they love with all their heart will lead them to hell.  I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t feel like love to me.

So, Mr. or Mrs. Business Owner, perhaps I am overreacting and jumping to conclusions.  I sincerely hope this law was truly passed to protect religious freedom and not to discriminate against anyone.  I sincerely hope that you do not even exist, and that no person would actually refuse service to another person based on their choice of a partner.  I also realize that if you do exist, you probably never read this, or stopped after the first paragraph.  I realize that my impassioned plea may well fall on deaf ears.   However, if you do exist and you are reading this, please, please STOP.  Stop hurting people I love.  Stop turning back the clock of social justice by at least fifty years.  Stop using my government to legislate your discrimination and stop wrapping your bigotry in my Christian faith.

Sincerely,

Linda