Freedom of Speech?

A reporter said recently, I felt dirty writing about it. I feel the same. And I don’t know how to get that feeling out of my system. It is odd how it brought together my hometown, my faith and my life.

York, Pennsylvania is scattered throughout my writings; probably all writers invoke the places they grew up; "beginning places" are part of your DNA. To keep in touch I take to reading the online version of the York Dispatch … ever so often a name or place has a unique meaning.

In March of last year I read an OB for a soldier killed in a war I deeply believe is wrong. There was a picture of a 20 year old boy, “killed in a non combat-related vehicle accident in Anbar Province.” Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder. I played with “Snyders” when I was a kid.

The paper said he was a good Catholic boy; his aunt: "He was a wonderful son, and we're very proud of him and he served our country well.” I could not look at his picture without remembering the friends I’ve lost in other wars and thinking again, "what a waste."

Then yesterday in the on line Huffington Post I found a John Ridley column which began, “God Hates Fags? – NOT ANY MORE -- the Fred Phelps (of the) "God Hates Fags” family of the loving Christian Church (sic) in Topeka Kansas (has) finally being sued for protesting a soldier's funeral and a jury awarded the plaintiff $11 million for invasion of privacy and emotional distress.”

Who sued Phelps? The plaintiff was Matthew Snyder’s father who lives down the street from my third grade friend Richmond, in York. “The goofy jury threw a fit at God," Phelps said -- an eleven million dollar fit!

I’ve had my own experiences with the Rev. Phelps; two of them. One at church, and a more vivid one at an annual Pride Parade in West Hollywood at which I had been coxed from sidewalk viewing and into the parade by friends from church. It was exhilarating, waving to thousands of people until we came to that large intersection at Beverly and Santa Monica Boulevards.

There our little band of gay Christians, lead by an acolyte carrying his church’s golden cross, paused because of the parade's movement and encountered Phelps' "God Hates Fag" signs, drums and all. When his group saw the cross, it drove them into a frenzy. The commotion so mesmerized me that as the group moved, I stood there watching as they spewed out curse words.

In that moment I lost touch with the larger theatre around me. I don't know why I raise my hand and made the sign of the cross over them. But when I did several hundred people in 15 levels of bleachers behind me stood up, roared and applauded this guy standing alone in the middle of street, doing something he’d done before.

“What happened?” said my friends after I ran and caught up, “You’re blushing.” All I remember asking was, “Who ARE those people.” “Some Christians from Kansas.”

Christians! How could they be Christians? Why did their disfigured, hateful existence lead them to yell and scream at the symbol that has been at the center of my life; how can they bring their sick, distorted lives to a funeral of a grieving family whose son fought and died for his country.

Research reveals their aborted theology says that: God hates America and American soldiers because this county has a permissive attitude toward gay persons. And all of that precedes from a literal reading of the Biblical book of Leviticus.

The Huffington Post author suggests that there is little difference between Phelps and the so-called “mainstream,” right wing speakers at last month's Values Voters Conference at which all the Republican candidates for President appeared or Ann Coulter or Peter Pace or Jerry Falwell ... the list goes on and on.

That “list” would like to set themselves above the Phelps of the world; it is reported that other fundamentalist Christians in Topeka turn their heads away when someone mentions his name … but they all quote the same bible verses and preach the same gospel of intolerance making gay persons, as William Sloan Coffin says, the “last respectable minority to hate.”

As I grow older I begin to feel things changing. I think they are because I am. Stories abound about tolerance emerging from Utah, Kansas City, Nebraska, all of this in spite of red state labels, anti-gay marriage amendments, and a dying breed of sick Christian preachers. Even the consternation within my own Episcopal denomination speaks to a better future.

I guess that sense of change found its roots in the Susquehanna River bottom country; in cathedral sermons; in twenty year olds like Matthew Snyder who fight and died for a cause he believed in and for a county, that despite it aches and pains, grows toward acceptance and tolerance. And that washes away the dirt.
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Psalm 20:1-2
1 May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble, *
the Name of the God of Jacob defend you;
2 Send you help from his holy place *
and strengthen you out of Zion;