L-O-V-E, where Words and Worlds Collide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Bigotry is beneath contempt; add the sheer weight of hypocrisy and we are entering nether regions that would see even a skunk come up smelling of roses.

I will be 68 on the winter solstice, and have met some wonderful people throughout my life who have brought much light, purpose and hope to it. Some of these have been of one or other religious persuasion, people who see through the hypocrites that manipulate religion for their own purposes to spiritual origins in which all religions share more common ends than differences.

Even so, it has been my personal experience that the worst offenders against humanity have used religion as a front for their malpractices. A good many evangelical clerics are the obvious but not the only culprits; their attitude towards gay people, in some African countries especially, but just about everywhere (including parts of the UK) calls to mind phrase, ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man.’.

Of course, every walk of life has its diehard fundamentalists, arrogant bigots, and homophobes, but it has to be one of life’s greater ironies that so many are found among the world’s various religious communities.

Gay people in the northern hemisphere have seen many changes for the better since I was a schoolboy struggling to see how my sexuality could possibly be a criminal offence, and there are hopeful signs of change in parts of the southern hemisphere too... 

But we are common humanity living on the same planet, and it just won’t do that people are still being persecuted for their sexuality. The fight goes on.

L-O-V-E. WHERE WORDS AND WORLDS COLLIDE

G-A-Y,

left to make its own way in the world

for tinkering with convention,

ignoring derision last seen haunting

a bigot’s eyes

G-A-Y,

getting high as a brave new word,

tampering with traditions,

bridging divisions last seen reflected  

in a bigot’s eyes

G-A-Y,

not afraid of putting up two fingers

at heterosexual elements

last seen huffing, puffing, and catching

a bigot’s eye

G-A-Y,

in a world where evangelical monsters

and those with like minds

would be in on chase and kill at the wink

of a bigot’s eye

G-A-Y,

getting high as a brave new word,

viewed with suspicion

for getting close enough to see the whites

of a bigot’s eyes

G-A-Y,

born into a sorry world last heard

expressing pro-diversity

by shooting even more blanks at the whites

of a bigot’s eyes

  

Copyright R. N. Taber 2013