Things People Do With Their Tongues. Or, What's It Like to be the Only Somebody In the Room?

So tagging on to things Samantha has already said, and Sam has said, too -- words create, words can be salvation, and words can totally break a person. Sometimes (& I have been guilty of this myself, hence my mentioning it), in addition to the good, beautiful, bad, or dumbass (can you say dumbass in a church blog? Edit me if 'no.') things Christians say, it's been observed that we can commit sins of omission by what we don't mention. Today I'm not just thinking of kind words, compliments and well-deserved praises left to die in our mouths (although we can't know in advance what a huge validation some seemingly small, back-patting kindness can be). I'm thinking about the times when we don't use our mouths to stand up for the oppressed. And I'm wondering if, maybe inadvertently, some of us don't do it because we're nominally on the oppressor's side.

This may not apply to anybody else, this may only apply to me, and if so, great, I have something to work on. But I noticed last night that I haven't been letting certain things bother me as much as I should. I was reading about a radio broadcast that went out May 28th in California -- a bunch of morning show hosts (& if you've ever listened to a morning show, you know how obscene and gossipy morning shows can be) were having some sort of right-wing red-blooded American-male moment (for, like, 30 minutes) and started bashing children who struggle with gender

dysphoria, including, no joke, suggesting that a good way to cure kids with transgender identities/issues would be to beat them with shoes, or give them electroshock therapy. They went on, you know, calling these kids freaks, saying ruder things, and their stated, baseline justification for being so awful was that of moral superiority, that they could unleash all the hate and verbal corruption they wanted because their views on gender and sexuality were the correct ones, the good ones.

Now, I don't know that these talk-show hosts are professing Christians (I hope not); and, with the exception of people like the God Hates Fags guy, I hope most people who take their relationship with Jesus seriously would never act that way. But one thing that article made me realize is that I don't remember the last time I did anything about

people who did act like that, the last time I spoke out about it, did any letter-writing or public awareness deals or anything like that. I forgot that people were still being murdered and committing suicide because of the horrifying level of self-righteous disgust and rejection aimed at their take on sexuality and/or gender identity, and I honestly put the awareness that kids and adults who fall under the queer/GLBT umbrella need defense into a little box in my head. And I think one reason why is that once I became a Christian, and became convinced that gay and transgendered lifestyles weren't God's best plan for people, the GLBT community became a group of people that needed to be convinced that I was right, more than anything else. Loved, sure -- but loved with an armchair philosopher's non-involvement.

What was once a very vivid awareness, on my part, of the moral hate-crimes being committed daily against these precious (and vulnerable) members of our society faded and pretty much died once I became a Christian, because their ideas didn't line up with mine anymore. After reading about that radio broadcast, and thinking about the incalculable hurt that must have caused some people who heard it, or heard about it, thinking about people that I know that would have been hurt by that, I'm just wondering how often we don't speak out for those people, because of a sense of moral superiority. And I'd welcome your thoughts.