<p>So yesterday, a street preacher came and talked on the Plaza for a while - not an uncommon occurance - and as I was passing through, I saw a bunch of folk from the GLBTSS office, so I figured I go ahead and listen for a while. Val was up on the mic talking with the guy about homosexuality and the biological basis for similar things such as gender roles. It didn’t take too long before a few of the more.. angry people from GLBTSS to get up and start up a verbal argument with the guy which led to insults flying both ways. Once both sides got fed up with making fun of each other, I figured I’d get up there, to at least change the subject, because honestly, I felt bad for the guy for having to deal with people who seemed quite intent on fighting. </p>
<p>I started out on the same lines as the people before me - homosexuality - except that I disregarded biological statements and arguments for gender roles and started talking about how homosexuality actually worked within the Christian faith. Our conversation sort of resolved around the topic of the four Loves (eros, philia, storge, and agape) and how each one of those worked into a marriage and we disagreed on how it would fit into a homosexual relationship. He felt that a gay relationship would be based around eros, or philia gone too far, where as I felt that the love of any relationship should be as close to the selfless agape as possible and brought up that I Cor. 13, when taken in the context of a relationship, seems to me like the ideal. He argued that that passage was only about agape - the love of God/Christ for man. In a roundabout way, this led to him telling me that it wasn’t necessarily the act of sinning that would send me to hell so much as living in sin - in denial of righteousness - that would, and I pretty much told him that I would gladly go to hell for the love - love being God’s greatest gift to man kind - I’ve experienced in this life. I meant to add that I believed suffering to be, second only to love in my eyes, another wonderful gift, but he went on about hell for a while after I said that, and what it was.</p>
<p>Anyway after this discussion, he asked me about my friends before me and why they had seemed so hostile towards him, so I offered up something Dr. Carter had said a long time ago - that sometimes a group has to push a little too hard for equality - to go a little too far for their rights before things level out and things are set into a balance; as was the case with women’s sufferage and the Vietnam war demonstrations. By now, I’d been on the mic in front of about fifty people for nearly forty-five minutes, and said as much. To my surprise, the preacher asked for a round of applause for me, to which I didn’t know how to react. I thanked him and left as quickly as I could.</p>
<p>Last night, I decided to look up something that was mentioned when I said what I did about hell to find this: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul?” I sort of waffled about on this and in the end, I guess I can’t help but think how selfish it would be of me to not only deny God’s gift of love and the ability to love, but also to expect that love is a means to the end of Heaven. Love is the means -and- the end, and if Heaven is anywhere, it’s here on earth, where there are emotions, individuality, and the divine opposites of love and suffering, which have a wild tendency to be one and the same. I guess such an outlook leaves little enough room for hell, but.. well.. I’m not complaining.</p>
<p>So. I remain agnostic - I’m too caught up in this Heaven of Earth and the God of Love/Suffering within all of us to worry about whether or not I’m following an established doctrine; I’m here for the Life and the Death and, above the rest, the Love of All. Hrrf c.c The preacher was good, though, and nearly had me converting. That wouldn’t mesh with a good portion of who I am, though, and I now realize just how much. No matter what I agree with in the Bible or the Qur’an or any text, sect, or organized religion, I just can’t stop being myself and having my individual faith of my own kind. To do so would be to wear a mask for the rest of my life. To do so would be to forfeit my soul</p>
