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by James McCall,

 

Every once in a while, American society goes through a phase in which hordes of people get caught up in movements which, eventually, they become ashamed of, all of which are steeped in nothing but pure, unadulterated hatred.

Cast your minds back to the post-emancipation era and the emergence of the Ku Klax Klan whose membership, at some stage, numbered approximately 6 million. Membership aside, its sympathizers included many millions more. And while their hatred is said to be multifaceted, their violence was aimed primarily at black people. No one knows for sure how many lives were snuffed out by this terrorist group, but the numbers are believed to be staggering. There are individual stories such as Malcolm X’s father who was said to have killed himself but the circumstances of whose death clearly showed that he was murdered.

Take the case of 14-year-old George Stinney who, to this day, remains the youngest person ever executed in the United States. He was accused of killing two white girls with a bit of wood which, at his size, he was hardly able to lift. That was in 1944, in South Carolina. Or what about that other 14-year old boy, Emmett Till, whose murder gave birth to the Civil Rights Movement? He died because he allegedly whistled at a white woman. That was 1955 in Mississippi. Both states are in what is known as the Deep South, the home of the Klan.

During that same time when the Klan was enjoying wide support, in the aftermath of the Second World War, which ended in 1945, and the start of the Korean war in 1950, America was deathly afraid of the communist expansion which was taking place right before their eyes. They saw Eastern Europe gobbled up; they saw China taken over by the communist forces of Mao Tse-tung in 1959. Right after the Second World War, they saw the partitioning of Germany into East and West, each becoming a separate state. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary all became satellite states of the USSR. The Cold War was in full cry.

One United States Senator, Joseph McCarthy, a Republican representing Wisconsin, spearheaded what came to be known as McCarthyism, which was a system by which Americans were systematically accused of subversion, complicity and cooperation with communist forces. Notwithstanding that the United States constitution guaranteed citizens of the United States the right to freely express one’s views, many were accused of membership in, or being sympathetic to, the Communist Party, and hauled before various investigative bodies. Needless to say, many lives were ruined.

This next wave has to do with people’s sexuality. Specifically, it has to do with the question of homosexuality, as if it is some new phenomenon, which it is not, people have had sexual relations with the same sex as well as enjoy the content of twinkmovies and similar sites for a while now. What has happened is that society’s hypocrisy has created a massive movement known as LGBT, the acronym for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender persons. I said hypocrisy because, while many have joined the bandwagon in opposing LGBTs, they are doing so without making proper arguments against it.

We are living at a time when fewer persons are professing religious faith and, whether one likes it or not, the basis for the opposition is steeped in the scripture. As such, if one is making the argument against LGBT on any grounds other than religious, he/she is bound to fail. And, even in the face of reduced interest in things religious, one is standing on even shakier ground.

With the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the United States, many are still up in arms. We can all remember the case of Kentucky County Clerk, Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples and was hauled off to jail for defying the ruling of the Supreme Court. (http://www.wsj.com/…/kentucky-county-clerks-office-defies-c…)

Many focused their anger towards the Supreme Court but will have done so out of sheer ignorance. The Court at the time was made up of five conservatives and four liberals/moderates and, given that make-up, the law would not have passed, had the arguments been predicated upon religion. We would do well to remember that the arguments were predicated upon the constitution and not a passage of scripture. As such, their ruling had absolutely nothing to do with the scripture, which is quite appropriate, given that we are not a theocracy.

Now, in the state of North Carolina, in the city of Charlotte, where many a business interest is headquartered, the legislature passed a bill forbidding any business to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of sexual orientation, among other things. As a counter to that, the state legislature hurriedly convened a session and enacted a law that forbids any city or town in that state, to enact any law that forbids discrimination.

So, whereas the city of Charlotte was endeavouring to ensure that it would be able to continue to be a major economic and commercial hub, the State of North Carolina, in one fell swoop, has dealt what may eventually be a death blow to that aspiration, based wholly, solely and totally on the culture of hate. They just made it possible for a business interest in that state to place notices on their doors, saying “NO LGBTs” or “HELP WANTED! GAYS AND LESBIANS NEED NOT APPLY”. No different than the water fountains and bathroom facilities that differentiated between blacks and whites during the Jim Crow era.

Let’s return to the same religious argument I mentioned earlier. Scripture lumps all sexual sins into the same category. As such, a gay person is no more immoral than the married man who sneaks around, or the unmarried couple that is shacking up in what the government recognizes as a common-law marriage. However, while we, in our hypocrisy, have been focusing all of our our attention on the LGBTs, this has been happening:

· The number of births to unmarried mothers has been rising steadily every year. An unmarried mother will have been involved in either fornication or adultery in order to have child. Either that, or some immoral person raped her.
· In 2014, there were 43.9 births per 1,000 women between ages 15 and 44.
· In 2014, 40.2% of all births were to unmarried women. That’s almost half of the women who gave birth.
· There were 1,604,870 births to unmarried women in 2014.

Here is a link to the data I quoted.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_12.pdf

Somehow, it might be time for us to begin to see things from a balanced perspective. We need to own up to the fact that our hypocrisy has been responsible for the emergence of the LGBT movement as the major social and political force that it has become. The fact is, as was earlier alluded to, they have always been with us and for us to have treated them as if they were from another planet, is what gave them reason to agitate for the rights that we have been denying them and which we are so uncomfortable with. So uncomfortable are we, that we have clearly forgetting that many of us are engaged in activities that are equally condemned in the scripture. Per the Bible, homosexuality is a sexual indiscretion, as are adultery, fornication, incest, bestiality etc.

As in all other phases of mass hysteria over the many decades that we have been behaving like this, many lives have been adversely affected, and needlessly so. The sad thing is, while the mass hysteria might seem to disappear, it really does not, because blacks are still being unfairly treated, Bernie Sanders’ socialist stance still causes him to be seen as if he is carrying leprosy and, as time will tell, we will never be comfortable with Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender persons.