God LOVED Them!

When I hear the hateful rhetoric of "Christian" people against LGBTQ folks, it makes me think about what happened to a young Wyoming man named Matthew Shepard almost 26 years ago now. Matthew was a kind, gentle-natured young man who had attended college and was majoring in Political Science and had a minor in Languages. Even so, he had previously been beaten and bullied because of his sexual orientation and had suffered from depression and severe anxiety as a consequence of those assaults on him.

At the time of his death, he was just a few weeks shy of his twenty-second birthday. He was beaten, tortured, tied to a split rail fence, and left to die in the cold. Matthew died a few days after he was found as a consequence of the pistol-whipping he had received from the homophobes who had so viciously and mercilessly attacked him. Later, at his funeral, the pastor and congregants of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church treated those who mourned him to signs that suggested that God hates "fags", and that Matt was in HELL!

More recently, another beautiful young gay and Jewish man named Blaze Bernstein was stabbed to death by a neo-Nazi homophobe in California. He had previously graduated from the Orange County School of the Arts and was enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at the time of his murder. He was stabbed twenty-eight times simply because his homosexuality and Jewish heritage enraged a young man with a pocketknife. Blaze's parents loved and accepted him, and most of us cannot even imagine the pain and suffering that his loss has engendered in them. Not to mention that the heartless murderer and his attorneys put on a defense that attributed Blaze's death to his own sexual aggressiveness. Try to imagine what sitting through that trial was like for the parents who loved him!

I don't know about you, but the God that I worship IS LOVE. Moreover, he commands everyone, everywhere, to love one another as we love ourselves! My Savior, Jesus of Nazareth, said to treat others in the same way that you would like to be treated by them! The man who authored many of the New Testament writings which I revere, the Apostle Paul, defined love as being patient, kind, forgiving, hopeful, and persistent. He also said that love does NOT dishonor others, and that it is NOT easily angered. Hence, I have to conclude that GOD LOVED Matt and Blaze. All of this prompts me to ask a couple of questions: Why didn't the men who murdered them love them? What possible justification could they have had for hating them? What do you think?