Blue Truck, Red State: Queer Hutterite (2016)

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Queer Hutterite (2016)

The coming-out story of a young man who grew up in a Hutterite colony in Canada. Which is essentially the same story all of us had to go through: the conflict between the truths you were taught, and the truth you know within.

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2 comments:

Frank said...: He seems less scarred than many others from strict religious backgrounds. Pretty well adjusted despite being shut out of his family and community. All these "religions" that have deep rooted anti-gay, homophobic attitudes and beliefs have harmed so many of us. The Bible, the Torah, the Quran, Buddhist teachings, and many other religions all seem to have some condemnation or prejudice against LGBTQ persons. Why?; November 29, 2022 at 8:35 AM
Russ Manley said...: Answer: they were all written by straight men for straight men - in times and places and societies very different from the modern world we live in.

And of course their concept of God was made in their own image: God rules the world as the King rules his subjects, as the father rules his family. In a day when might made right, the emphasis was on strength and stability, and most decidedly not "do your own thing."

This approach simplifies social and political matters considerably, if not justly. Men were obviously suited for heavy work and warfare, women for babies and housework, and you either fitted in or got booted "off the island," so to speak: an efficient, unified society had a better chance of collective survival when everyone knew their job and stayed in their place.

Look up the teachings of Confucius sometime, if you haven't already: he wasn't writing scripture per se, but he's all about preserving the status quo so there can be peace and prosperity for the kingdom. Individuals were much less important than the whole; no nonsense about "inalienable rights," or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"!

But we have learned more and know more and live differently now. The ancient scriptures are a record of man's long search for God, for the Great Mystery behind the cosmos, for certainty and hope in a blind, cruel, indifferent universe - and they contain many sublime thoughts that can inspire us still.

But as I see it, one has to strain out the parts that were merely human thoughts and attitudes, and see what parts of the divine remain.

God is Love: for me, that's the part that really counts.; November 29, 2022 at 10:43 AM

Prayer for Peace

Prayer for Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?

It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.

If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.

--Archbishop Desmond Tutu