I missed National Coming Out Day!
I'm a bit upset as I was excited to blow up balloons and celebrate it in my office hopefully encouraging a conversation with the students that I saw that day.
On a bright side though, I did have a lovely conversation with my conservative Christian student worker, B.
B likes to talk about her classes with me and openly debate, respectfully!, things that she is working out in her head. She bopped into my office showing me the book for her new half-term course. She giggled as she waved about the printouts that were hole-punched and kept together with a paper clip. I asked he how she liked the class. She crinkled her nose up and said that it felt a bit rudimentary compared to her World Diversity and America course she had previously taken. She waxed poetic about the professor and it sounded like a class that would have affected me immensely had I taken it in undergraduate studies.
Which she then bounced into her current course Human Sexuality after she talked about LGBT panel that had spoken in World Diversity and America as a comparison to the panel from Queers & Allies that came to her Human Sexuality course. She found it informative and only had one qualm that the panel and the other students became very argumentative when the question was brought up of "is being LGBT a choice?"
She said that many started lambasting the religious question, as they felt it was condeming those who identified as LGBT.
She spoke up about Christianity and from her claming up it sounded like she was yelled at for doing so, but the thing that I loved learning in talking to her. She believes that being LGBT is not a choice, that it is something within. I didn't dig more, but she and I do talk about how being a Christian and being a "Christian" are different aspects.
A lot of what I see in the media and arguements are from those who are "Christian" who use quotes for a sort of propoganda, but don't have a time when they questioned the verses that they spout out (as B did) and actually see the Bible as a form of literature that needs to be seen through each eyes.
B and I left the conversation with the words that I used to sum up what I thought she felt needed to be said, no one is the judge of anyone else. Whomever, or whatever higher power (or lack thereof) is what will determine how you are in the afterlife.
Live your life with respect of the human, animal, or even space that you encounter.
Hear that Domino's?
Ceasing Ramble.
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2 comments:
I still remember a discussion Carrie and I had in the food court of Mall of America, watched over by the crazed grin and buggy eyes of the giant scary bee (sadly no longer there). She had a really interesting explanation of her views that I can totally do no justice to, especially this early in the morning, but she'd clearly thought a lot about her views. She basically said that she's found a lot of evidence of God in her life, and found that following her church's interpretation of the Bible to be right for her, etc, and that while she didn't necessarily always understand the why behind God's rules, she had enough other evidence of him that she took them all on faith. (I am doing a really crappy job of explaining this.) And then she said the same thing as your student -- that even though she believes being LGBT is against God, she also believes it's not her place to judge at all. And while I've found a lot of people -- "Christians" as you said -- spout that whole "it's not my place to judge" as a way to judge, Carrie actually meant it 100%.
And that conversation was the first time I really felt like someone with a brain could hold that viewpoint. Which is tough to reconcile, because you know I'm the big atheist, 100% gay rights, etc. But, yeah...I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It was just a really interesting, profound conversation, and I highly recommend Carrie for talk about such matters. And suddenly miss her lots and lots. (And you. :( C'mon December!)
You know, if there even IS an afterlife. But if there is, those people who cut your chicken kickers in half are going to hell. And not the cool part of hell that I'll be in, but the really crappy part of hell...
I missed national coming out day too, but wasn't it on a Sunday or something?
As far as your conversation goes, if these people volunteered to be on the panel, I can't believe they didn't either expect such a question or prepare to not get defensive about it. I'm surprised by that reaction - no matter the question, really. It seems like it was a professional and educational environment. I probably would have been disappointed, too.
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