Tools of God

"God wrote the bible..." so does that make homosexuality wrong?

            You grew up in one of those strong, Christian families. The kind where your religion is the only one that is right and everyone else needs to accept Jesus into their heart before you can go to heaven. You constantly tried to convert people, telling them that you believed Armageddon was coming. It was normal for you, because you went to a Christian prep school. To you, God was in everything. God used people as tools to fix people who had went astray from him. You were one of these tools, and honored to be one. It was a beautiful life feeling purposeful. You enjoyed telling people they were wrong and pointing out scripture, because your parents told you God wrote the Bible. You wanted what God wanted, and that meant changing people.

Your cousin, he was different. He grew up three states away in a household where they didn’t believe you had to go to church. They were spiritual. To them, being on terms with God one on one and dealing with the world with guidance on an emotional level was most important. They went about their lives just trying to get by, to experience, and to grow. They didn’t believe in telling others what to do. They didn’t think we were all tools. They simply went about their life talking about art, sex, beauty, poetry, amongst other flighty ideas.  

Yet as you two grew up, despite your differences, you were close. You played well together, you enjoyed many of the same things, and you had many of the same ambitions. When he would visit once a year he would stay for a month. You would spend that entire month outside, in public swimming pools, skating down Main Street, going to Pirates of the Caribbean four times while he was there, terrorizing malls, and going to baseball games with mitts far too large for your hands in the hopes that you would catch a foul ball. Your parents dropped hints at your cousin that religion was important. You all took him to church once. He said he just didn’t like it. You didn’t understand why. How could someone not like church? How could someone not like God?

When you began to move into the teenage years the differences really started popping up. You called anyone who had an abortion a murderer, and your cousin said it was none of your business. You looked at a drunken hobo on the street and hissed sinner, while your cousin practically wept for the sadness they saw in this man’s eyes. You saw a woman kiss a woman on the ferris wheel and gagged in disgust while your cousin turned away, saying simply love is love.

 

You suspected nothing until you went to college. Your cousin had always had girl trouble, but you never figured out exactly what the problem was there. It was only once you were stuck in classrooms with the homosexuals you saw the similarities. Most gay men seemed to dress the same. They typically wore brand name clothes like Aeropostale, were very well groomed, and seemed to always have a fohawk. This wasn’t true for all of them, but it seemed pretty prevalent. Your cousin had always dressed well, used hair gel, etc. What alarmed you was that in the last picture you received from him, he had a fohawk. That was what really pushed you into thinking.

“Could he be gay?”

Even then you denied it. You said that they were just like him, not vice versa. He was just a good looking guy whose parents raised him to be well groomed. Plenty of guys just liked that style. When he came to visit next you treated him like you always did. You did notice that the places you took him he didn’t look at women, but maybe he had a girlfriend? You had not asked. Then one night while you had dinner with you family, you found a rainbow bracelet on his wrist. When you drove him back to your grandmother’s where he was staying you parked and got serious with him. You asked.

“What is this?” You pointed at his wrist. The bracelet was like a smudge of feces across him in your eyes.

His eyes flicked down and showed surprise. It was obvious he didn’t realize he had this on before now. Clumsily he covered his wrist, sliding the bracelet off with the ease of a sanitizing wipe on a baby’s bottom.

“It’s just something a friend gave me. I saw this movie Milk and wanted to fight for gay rights.”

“Are you gay?!” The pitch of your voice reached past the ceiling of the car.

“Does it really matter?”

“Of course it does! Do you realize you will go to hell?”

At this point he stared at you. In his eyes you imagined a flash of red, the sign of the devil, of something that had taken hold of him. He reached a hand towards you that you dodged. He paused, a pained expression crossing his face before he turned and left the car. Your anger and emotion heightened and you peeled out, speeding away as you cast imaginary rocks in his face.

 

You cut contact. You refused to tell your family why, because frankly you didn’t believe it could be true. He didn’t say it was true. Maybe he just had a friend that was gay and was therefore touchy on the subject? Someone so much like you could not like someone of their same sex. It just wasn’t possible. He was so logical, so spiritual, so right. You put your shame, fear, and confusion into anger. That anger built into hate. No matter how many times he tried to call you, you ignored him. After a few months he slowed his calling down to a trickle. After a couple of years he gave up entirely. When he came to visit you went somewhere else. You told your parents you hated him and had reason. Something made them accept it. Maybe they sensed some kind of difference in him themselves.

You grew older. You graduated. You got a good job, got married, had children. Everything was going just right. One day you caught the flu due to asthma you had carried since childhood that your mother said was the result of her sin of smoking. You sat in the waiting room at urgent care. It was going to be a long wait. Normally you brought a good novel to read to make up the time, but you had forgotten in your rush. Luckily, a national news station was on the television in the room.

At first there was a story about a missing little girl. This was always a painful one for you, especially since you had your own children. You prayed that she was safe. You didn’t even like to think what could have happened to the child. The next story was introduced.

“In Logan, Utah a hate crime against 26 year old man resulted in his brutal death. In this case the defendants claim they were doing the will of God. Full story next.”

You immediately thought that another terrorist believing in Allah had gone nuts and murdered some innocent person. As the commercials went by you felt your anger building, until the intro music broke in again. Then you paid rapt attention.

“26 year old Seth Mortenson beaten to death after leaving a night club.”

Shock ran through you. That was your cousin!

“He had spent the previous hours at Ashley’s gay bar. When he exited the club a group of local Christian radicals attacked him in the alley. A video recorded by a bystander as he called the police revealed the attack. They seemed to have used bars and two by fours, also carving messages into his arms. He was declared dead at the scene.”

While they went into opinions on the story, where people would call in and discuss the situation, you sit there stunned. These men were claiming they did the right thing in the name of God because this man, his cousin Seth, was adamantly open in the local community.

For the first real time in your life, you were completely torn. You could understand why someone would hate a gay person (It was disgusting!) but killing them? At first you tried not to think about your cousin, one of the nicest people you ever knew, being beaten to death. Then you felt yourself falling down a rabbit hole you never imagined you could.

You were angry.

No, you were fuming.

You stood, staring at the screen as the faces of the defendants were shown. You couldn’t understand why you hated them so. You cousin asked for it! Yet, he was just a normal person. What did it matter what he did in private?

Author's Note

For this piece I decided to toy with POV, putting the reader into the main character's shoes. I'm a staunch supporter of gay rights, so this is a touchy subject for me.

Reviews

[Alice]

I really enjoyed this story. This reminded me of a friend I have who grew up in an extremely religious family in the south, where I don't doubt that a bashing would happen. His parents believe in the "Gay=Hellfire" rant. You would not believe how often I hear this- but anyways.
The 2nd person pov was both enlightening and well written. How often can you say that? You have complete mastery of the thing, so kudos.
Moving on- you may want to name your narrator, simply becuase it's good to have something to pin the listed characteristics on. You may also want to name the 'cousin' before the end of the story.
All in all, a great work.

[A.D. Wilson]

Excellent story. This is very true to life, I'm sad to say. People shouldn't judge each other by their sexual orientation, but I live in the "Bible Belt" so I see this kind of behavior all the time. It is truly sad that people can't learn to love each other, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Oh, I only had one small bit of criticism--"To fix people who had went astray" would sound better as "who had gone astray". You are the author, not me, but I just thought it sounded better.

[Annette Jay Sweeney]

Arra,
Thank you for the extensive review. I just wanted to address your concerns.

I'm well aware that God didn't write the bible. It's just something I have had said to me. I was engaging in a talk about religion, specifically that the prophets that wrote the Bible lived in a very different time period from ours and may have put in parts that came from their time, not the will of God. People treat the Bible as if it is the utmost authority, when really these men included things we have already began ignoring (for example, I don't remember the passage but it is suggested a woman that commits adultery should be put to death). This was just a tender point for me, especially pertaining to people arguing against homosexuality.

I used Milk as a recent reference on purpose. This isn't meant to be a reflection on how things were. This is to reaffirm that there are still radical haters out there. I live in a community that is dominated by religion, so I feel the sting. While I don't see radical activity happening here, I have met many people in other states in the last few years that are similar to the characters in this story. We are on the brink of another civil rights movement, but I agree it has been on the way for over fourty years. I wanted to stress to people that even though it seems we are accepting this, it is still viewed extremely negatively and we must get past this.

I hope you know I'm not being rude, just both of these needed thorough explanation.

[alesuriko]

Before I comment on the piece... I just want to say that technically "God" didn't write the bible... people wrote the bible... it was dictation... Sorry for starting out that way but I'm one of "those" people (interpret that as you may haha, because being vague is fun).

Now to the story... usually I really hate reading things that use the "you" perspective. It's annoying for the most part and it feels amateur and naive. But that was not the case with this one. It was extremely well written. A few run-on sentences and fragments and some things that could have used more detail. But otherwise, it was an amazing read. So personal and you really got into the mind of a person like that, displaying accurately how they would feel and what their opinions would be. It's a real life event that happens to so many people and you expressed it wonderfully. And it wasn't completely emotive, it gave room for individual thought and opinions, allowing each reader to make up their own minds and feel their own feelings about this matter instead of outwardly pushing on aspect of emotion on them. It really makes you feel and it would really make people in those circumstances think.

Also, interesting reference with Milk... for those who know the movie it skews the setting, or at least it did for me. I started reading with the impression that this was set quite a few years ago, back when people weren't as accepting of homosexuality. Even being back in 2000 would work. But since Milk is a 2008 movie... it changes everything and makes it feel different. It is plausible for people to think and behave that way in this time, but there aren't as many big radical religious hate crimes as there were, not to mention most Christians know that people have done that before. My only suggestion for this story is to choice a different movie that would set the context better. But it's all up to you. Although it feels slightly awkward, it works for our time era more or less.

Otherwise... this was a great story, well written and extremely expressive. A very wonderful read. Well done.