Bigots, homophobes and the love of God

I like living where I do. Most of the time. But today I'd rather have been in my native Glasgow. I'd rather have been with friends on the Gay Pride march - friends I know because of the church. My church, their church. But instead I was here, reading my local paper - for we all do, you know, even when it's depressing reading, because we don't know what you'll miss if we don't read it. I read the letters page, skipping over it to see if there was anything interesting - and came across one that took up more column inches than any of the others, and certainly more than I would tend to have written in my now defunct church reports.

It made me sick. It seems to be an answer to a letter I've missed - maybe when I was somewhere civilised. It's a homophobic rant in defence of "traditional and well-accepted marriage" which dismisses as "meanderings" the words of Desmond Tutu (presumably  "I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place," ) and accuses him of "erroneously" stepping outside "the clear and wholesome directives of his holy book".

In the past I often wished I had a public voice that wasn't dependent on the whims of some editor or - interestingly - newspaper owner. Now I have, and this is what I want to say to anyone who reads either this or the ghastly outpourings from Ardentinny: I do not wish to go to a homophobic heaven either. I wouldn't go near a homophobic church, and I rejoice in the welcoming openness of my own. All Christians are not homophobic (and this sounds like the start of a syllogism, which if pushed to its conclusion might be interesting ...) The teachings of the bible are anything but clear, obviously - because people like the bigot from Ardentinny don't get it. People who think it's clear scare me to bits.

But what is clear to me is this. I worship a God who loves all God's children equally. Equally = the same, each as much as the other, no distinctions made. We are not here to question that outrageous love, but to try to do likewise. 

Even when it comes to bigots and homophobes. Hard, huh?