more important things

This is how some people feel. They've listened to the listening committees, they've written to their member of parliament, they might have even protested outside some office or against a parade. But now, they would like to move on to other things, and someone like me drawing cartoons about the same topic again and again can be irritating.

I don't think I'll be stopping anytime soon.

For starters, if there are some people who are treated as less than other people, all of us are less. Desmond Tutu said: "If I diminish you, I diminish myself", and in a similar way, if others are diminished, we are all diminished. It is not enough for women to be liberated if some women are oppressed for being black. It is not enough for black women to be liberated if some black women are oppressed for being lesbian. It is not enough for black lesbian women to be liberated if some are being oppressed for being Jewish. And so on.

So I draw cartoons in a desire to increase embrace and decrease exclusion, so that all people would be welcome and embraced, and so that we will all be more aware and thinking about what we think, feel and do.

Is this the most important issue of today? I don't know. What I do know, is that matters of sexual orientation are ubiquitous. Whether it's bullying of gay students at school here in Canada or employees being fired solely due to their non-heterosexual sexual orientation being discovered in the U.S., to the greater extremes of countries around the world having or enacting laws which imprison or execute lgbt people, this is one of the key justice issues today. And because of a long legacy of Christian churches rejecting those in sexual minorities, this is a key spiritual issue. If we believe God loves everyone, why is it not more obvious??

Finally, I do comment on many other things on this blog -- check out the Categories section on the side and you'll see that the posts range from aboriginal to hell to mental illness to sex trade workers. But just as a political commentary blog deals with current political events and happenings, this is a social commentary blog and many of the happenings right now, happen to be lgbt. Thus, there is "a lot of fodder for the cannon." Not that I'm shooting at people -- it's just a metaphor, one that stems from the violence within me and within us all, the violence that Jesus came to undo and overcome and dissolve by giving his life non-violently for us all. See, I even managed to get a gospel message in this post.


rob g

p.s. Please use the comments feature to respond to this altar call.