How Can They Say These Things?

I know a lot of our readers also check out Box Turtle Bulletin, so I tend to avoid duplicating their posts. Today, though, Tim Kincaid says something so directly and so well that I can't help reproducing the whole thing here:

I sometimes wonder how anti-gay activists can knowingly and purposefully say things that simply are not true. I wonder how they can see the decency and normalcy of gay people and yet ascribe to them the most evil intentions and agenda.

Somehow these folks have created a world in which the evidence before their eyes is far less important than a blind faith in the opposite. They choose to believe that all that they see in front of them or hear from those who know is to be discounted, dismissed, and argued away unless it fits with their pre-conceived view of existence.

I believe that a faith that cannot subject itself to scrutiny is not a faith at all; rather it is based in fear - a fear that it we look too closely and see too clearly that what have always believed may disappear leaving us without a foundation or protection, alone. So those whose faith is fear must seek self-blindness, willfully.

Today I ran across an example, a truly tragic story. Cherie Rowe, a volunteer for ex-gay group Exodus International, tells of her struggle over the past 13 years to deal with her daughter’s homosexuality.

Now this is not a tale of “that dangerous lifestyle”. The daughter has a “sweet partner”, wonderful friends who have become family to her, and still tries to keep a relationship with her mother. But despite recognizing that her daughter has a blessed life, Cherie still longs that God work a miracle and remove all that goodness from her daughter.

I do confess that seeing their demonstrations of affection to one another is sometimes difficult, but God’s amazing grace allows me to accept them and love them without approving of their lifestyle.

I am so aware of how I might have been swayed by the tides of emotion in favor of these same sex relationships, had I not been rooted and grounded in the infallible Word of God.

The extent to which Cherie Rowe’s self-absorption is present on the page is astonishing. And no doubt that ability to see the world only in terms of herself has given her certainty that she and her faith are absolute, steadfast in the face of all evidence to the contrary - so she is careful not to see it.

She is so “rooted and grounded” that she can see love and think that it is evil. She is so “rooted and grounded” that she thinks that her own selfish desire to control her daughter is a passion to see God glorified.

Willful Blindness

It is a strange trainwreck when ideology and personal experience contradict one another, you know what you believe and you know what you see with your own two eyes and they do not go together. When that happens, most of us investigate to ensure there is not an illusion, and then adjust our belief to be congruent with our perception.

I love the first sentence of Kincaid's post: I sometimes wonder how anti-gay activists can knowingly and purposefully say things that simply are not true. We have seen this over and over in our county, whether it's lying about what's in the sex-ed curriculum, lying about the nondiscrimination bill, or whatever. If you are used to associating with people who expect and deliver truthfulness and honesty, and then you talk with these anti-gay lunatics, you almost feel like you are among a different species. It's not just that they have different customs from us, it is a fundamental difference where basic cognitive building-blocks such as facts and logic are simply absent.