Monday, October 15, 2007

Fundo Xian Religion Takes Hit from Youth

Finally, some hopeful news about the "younger generation". Today the results of a large poll were released, and the news ain't good for the Fundo Xians.

According to the story (published in San Antonio, of all places -- and not so much elsewhere), today's young people see Christianity as judgmental, hypocritical and -- most importantly -- anti-gay.

I say good for them. I grew up in Oklahome in the 50s, when Civil Rights were pretty much a pipe dream, where the "negroes" knew their place and pretty much stayed in it. No one could have predicted that the gathering storm on the historical horizon would result in the major sea change in American society that was wrought by Martin Luther King and the other major players in the Civil Rights pantheon.

And I believe that it took the changing attitudes towards race of young people to help bring this about. Now we are engaged in another monumental Civil Rights struggle, this time for the equal rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered people, and it will be won, just as the struggle of my generation was won. And it is the young people who will make it happen.

In a way it's kind of scary, though, since every time The Church has come under scrutiny and objective criticism, the backlash has been horrific (e.g., the Inquisition, the slaughter of the Huguenots, the list goes on...), and there's no reason to suspect it won't happen again as a result of the conclusions of this study. Watch for modern equivalents of the rack, the bastinado, and the fiery stake, used as instruments of missionary zeal.

So you freedom-loving intellectually-honest young people -- and I am proud to put my free-thinking, authority-questioning agnostic 14-year-old grandson in that mix -- stand your ground, stay true to your Secular Humanism and your sense of social justice, and give the well-deserved boot to those homophobic authoritarian judgmental assholes in your life.

Life is too short to worry about what other people are doing in the bedroom. Stand up for what's right.

There is hope after all for this country.

2 Comments:

Granny said...

When one of our local high schools was finally allowed to form a gay-straight alliance the protests came from parents and the fundamentalist churches (not all the churches by any means though), not the kids.

fjb said...

I can proudly count my 16 year old son as one of the new generation of free-thinking, authority questioning, undaunted young people in this world, too. There's hope for all of it yet, Farnsworth.