When I was an Orientation Aide, we had a skit in which a guy referred to an offensive incident as "gay," a common statement of negativity. Then two other people set the first guy right by explaining that, as he was an athlete, it was as if people called a bad thing "jock," instead of "gay." In our story, the guy got the message and everyone lived happily ever after.
It doesn't always end that way.
This month is the fifth anniversary of the murder of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old Wyoming college student beaten to death after being tied to a fence, all for being gay.
The two savages who committed the crime are in prison now, and Shepard's family maintains a public face as a beacon of tolerance in memory of their son with the Matthew Shepard Foundation (www.matthewshepard.org).
With the popularizing of gay culture in mass media, it's easy to forget that a war is being waged in households, courthouses and parishes across America.
As members of a society that proclaims itself to be the enlightened pinnacle of human civilization, we are soldiers in this war. On one side of the battle lines are people like Shepard's mom and dad, Judy and Dennis Shepard; on the other stands Fred Phelps.
Phelps is both the founder of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., and a proponent of medieval ideals. To him, being gay is not only a mortal sin punishable by the highest kind of divine retribution, but something that must be intimidated out of the public consciousness.
Members of this "reverend's" church brought their twisted brand of religion to Long Island this week to display their disgust in what they see as W.C. Mepham High School's condoning of homosexuality.
Three varsity Mepham football players had been charged with sodomizing junior varsity players during camp in Pennsylvania.
Clearly, as David Kilmnick puts it, "Anyone with a pulse in his body would know there is no link between sexual assault and sexual orientation."
Kilmnick, executive director of Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth, goes on to characterize Phelps' group as "very dangerous."
How dangerous?
For starters, the Westboro Baptist Church's Web site, www.godhatesfags.com, advertises Phelps' plan to erect a monument in Casper City Park, in Casper, Wyo., near where Shepard grew up which reads, "Matthew Shepard entered Hell Oct. 12, 1998, at age 21 in defiance of God's warning: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, it is an abomination.' Leviticus 18:22. "
Sin may just be a matter left up to God, but hate is a matter human beings are well equipped to take on.
To do this we need true education, not the stereotypes of television telling us that if we laugh at "Will and Grace" then we're not hateful or fearful or ignorant.
Prejudice is an epidemic; it is spread by people like Phelps and his ghoulish hordes. The cure is to learn.
Gay people are as normal as green eyes or freckles. They are no more an abomination than being left-handed.
It all starts here; we have to spread a message of compassion, equality and acceptance, to our government, to our parents and to our friends.
Phelps claims to speak for Christianity, or as his Web site would put it, "Gospel truth." As a student of religion, Christianity intrigues me, but I am by no means a theological scholar. One passage, incidentally from one of the New Testament gospels, struck me as a self-evident rebuttal to Phelps' poison, spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper:
" ... Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love another. If you have love for one another, then everyone will know that you are my disciples." John 13:34-35.
