Letters & Opinions: Anti-gay Christians threaten free speech ............Christian Ethics And The UTech Beating.

Since the awful UTECH Physical attack of an alleged gay male student on November 2, 2012 this one does not seem to be a nine day wonder and it's good in a sense, here are some more opinions and letters worth considering, I for one have been doing more listening than commenting this time around as there is some balance I see coming through public commentators whether it is to suit the present case is another matter and is yet to be seen how it plays out. Here are two pieces one from each newspaper.

Anti-gay Christians threaten free speech.

Dear Editor,

The anti-gay religious extremists will stop at nothing as they resort to worshipping their anti-gay agenda while having forgotten about their Christian God.

Our television stations were recently threatened for having refused to air public service announcements (PSAs) about tolerance for homosexuals because they wanted to obey angry pastors. They also claimed the ads would break laws against homosexuality even though the Broadcasting Commission indicated that the PSAs do not breach any of their regulations or laws of Jamaica.

Do the views of selected groups of pastors now trump constitutional rights to freedom of expression and right to dissemination views and opinions in the media? Would the views of members of the LGBT community be taken into consideration if the anti-gay movement were to make any PSAs for themselves? This is certainly not fair and equal treatment, as the last PSA was amended taking into consideration the concerns of the stations.

The anti-gay Christian movement works tirelessly to victimise themselves and portray the LGBT movement as aggressors coming to take away their freedom of expression and religion in a desperate effort to make people feel sorry for them.

Are they really victims or just latent aggressors themselves? Just two months ago a British filmmaker in Uganda was arrested for airing a play about the conditions of gay people in the country and is now facing two years in a Ugandan prison cell. Moralists in Russia sued Madonna for US $10.5 million in August because she spoke up for gay rights and Ukraine's parliament currently has a bill to pass into law that would make it a criminal offence to air positive depiction of gays in the media.

The anti-gay movement in Jamaica and abroad has been either silent or has congratulated these countries for standing up against what they call "cultural imperialism", despite the fact that their buggery laws came from European nations. Apparently "freedom of expression" applies only to the anti-gay movement and Christian supremacists who are obsessed with homosexuality. This is definitely something for journalists to write about whenever they are ready to discuss the LGBT movement. There are two sides to every story. Agreed?

Admin Gay

Spanish Town

antigayfactcheck@yahoo.com

and

Christian Ethics And The UTech Beating

David Pearson, Contributor

I have been rather disappointed to hear much of the public reaction to the security guards' beating of the allegedly gay youth at the University of Technology (UTech) recently. I was in a restaurant watching the noonday news on one of our local TV stations when the video was aired publicly.

The vitriolic response of a patron mirrored that of a few young persons I had spoken with a few moments before - as far as the man and the students were concerned, the youth should have been killed. Many of those uttering such views couch their angry words in the language of the Bible.

As a Christian theologian myself, I find this particularly disappointing, since there is nothing Christian about that position, even if people quote the Bible to support their points. The discipline of Christian ethics shows clearly that such a position is decidedly not Christian. I wish to show that here.

When we speak of the discipline of ethics, we have in mind the examination of the processes that we utilise in moral decision making. There are various approaches to ethics, most with something of value from which we can learn. For instance, deontology is the approach that says we have a duty to always do what is right, like speaking the truth and protecting human life, because such is right.

DETERMINING WHAT IS RIGHT

Consequentialism says that we can know what is right based on actions that produce good results, while virtue ethics say that virtuous people can be trusted to do virtuous things.

Whereas all have weaknesses, just a bit of examination of each will see that they all have strengths. And there are more approaches to the subject of determining right and wrong, which will demonstrate the same truth. In some senses then, a best approach to moral decision making will draw on elements of many approaches to the task.

What is the difference with Christian ethics? Most Christian ethicists will admit that it is the person of Christ that makes Christian ethics different, even if some of its approaches to the subject might mirror that of other philosophies.

Christ is seen as the embodiment of God and His approach to moral decision making, and it is in Him that the Christian gets his/her clearest example of how to navigate the difficult decisions that confront us. With no biblical reference to Christ's confrontation with abortion or homosexuality, how then do we see in Him a paradigm to follow in our much more complex world today? Perhaps if we saw His general approach to right and wrong, we would get some clearer directions on the matter.

Maybe it would be good to point out what Jesus did not do when making ethical decisions. For instance, He neither mirrored His moral standards on that of the religious leaders/people around him, nor did He blindly or legalistically quote from the Old Testament.

STRAIGHTJACKET APPROACH

I find that many Christians follow precisely these approaches in a kind of straitjacket way in dealing with the troubling situations that face us. "The Bible says that homosexuals must be put to death (Leviticus 20:13). That UTech student should be shot!" "My church does not stand for such slackness! We are Bible-believing people who understand that homosexuality is all about people turning their backs on God and going after what is unnatural (Romans 1)." This was not the way of Jesus.

In her classic 1957 work, Christian Ethics, Georgia Harkness outlined the following: Jesus' ethics were totally integrated with His religion, meaning that He did nothing outside of His concept of God and His relationship to Him.

But as He did this, He placed a stress on "ethical and spiritual inwardness", meaning that external religious posturing was not part of His modus operandi. Whether it had to do with praying, fasting, giving to the needy, or doing any other religious duty, Jesus warned that the external demonstration of such was really nothing, if indeed it did not spew forth from an inward life committed to such.

Jesus was not surprised about human sinfulness. But He also knew the possibilities of 'the redeemed life', and He gave plenty opportunities for so-called sinners to walk the more righteous path through His acceptance of them. Zacchaeus, Levi, the Samaritan woman at the well, and the woman caught in adultery were just a few such.

Jesus could do nothing else with these, given His God-centredness, since such was (and is) committed to the supreme worth of every individual to God. Harkness concludes that with such in mind, Jesus' central teaching was the establishment of the kingdom of God, where everyone benefits from the kingdom's ethics.

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

Let us apply the above to the UTech situation. Reports suggest that the young man who was beaten by the security guards was alleged to have been caught in a 'compromising position' with another male in a bathroom at the institution. On being attacked by a mob, the young man raced to the security post for protection, where he was beaten by two guards.

Though many have rightfully called for the guards to be fired, at the least, many still believe that the youth should have been beaten because of his 'nastiness'. How would Jesus' Christian ethic respond? Here I suggest a few points:

1. Allegations are just that - allegations. I suspect that it would not have been a concern of Jesus that it was alleged that the young man was caught 'in a compromising position'. His greater concern would have been why people act on allegations without checking the facts. In fact, even without Jesus, we have a legal code that says that "all persons are innocent until proven guilty".

The administration at UTech must rightly be concerned about the possibility of illegal and maybe even immoral activities taking place on their compound, privately or publicly. But alleged lewd acts taking place behind closed doors must never be treated as seriously as proven public atrocities.

2. Jesus would never have quoted any legal code to pronounce judgment on anyone. The fact is that the powerful in society, wherever their power comes from, always find it easy to use the law to trample on the weak. The mob was the powerful on that night, as were the security guards. Together they found an immoral strength and used it on this young scapegoat, perhaps to salve their own waning ethical consciences.

David Pearson is acting academic dean at the Jamaica Theological Seminary. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and davynth@gmail.com.