Murder is Still Murder... Even if You Do Say Amen

A newpaper item today reported that over 200 have been slain in Nigeria in religious based violence between Muslims and Christians. Women, children and men brutally butchered. Homes were burned and the survivors have fled in fear of violent reprisals.

The historic record of religious based violence follows the existence of religion from its very inception. Almost every known form of religion has utilized violence as a tool for its existence and perpetuation. The persecuted have become the persecutors and vice versa.

What is it that allows men to justify horrific acts of murder and torture in the name of their particular deity? What allows men to commit such terrible and public acts upon innocents? And the reality is that it is men that embark upon these violence fueled testimonies of their faiths. While women at times may be complicit, they are most often the first line of victims when these brutalities are unleashed. Raped, beaten, tortured, their children, husbands and other family members murdered in front of them and all too often, they too are murdered. And usually, it's in the name of either God or Allah.

And we must remember the violent torture and executions of our LGBTQ/SGL brothers and sisters who are murdered in other countries by religious extremists. In far too many places in this world queer people live in silent fear of "Godly men" fearful of losing their lives if they come out of the closet.

Retribution killings keep the blood flowing, the destruction rampant and the loss of life climbs. Families are destroyed, children murdered, children without parents, partners losing their beloveds, wives without husbands and sometimes children taken and brainwashed into becoming killers themselves.

And lest we get too comfortable sitting here in the U.S. thinking that we have escaped this terror we must remember our own country's past and continued religious based violence; both physical and psychological.

We have had our own fair share with one of the earliest examples being in 1637 when a Puritan militia burned 500 indigenous men, women and children alive at Fort Mystic. Then there's the Salem Witch Hunts. Manifest Destiny occurred because whites believed that it was their God given right and duty to take over lands formerly belonging to indigenous people. This was most often accomplished through violence and death. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in schools run by religious groups, where their hair was cut, their native languages silenced and Christianity forced upon them. Protestants initially made up the majority of this country's new settlers and they persecuted Catholics and Jews. Within the ranks of Protestant churches they fought one another over who was the better Christian. Slavery was supported by referencing the Old Testament with many religious leaders of the time themselves endorsing the practice. The KKK steeped itself in religious justification and while terrorizing, beating and killing primarily African-Americans they also targeted Catholics and Jews. The Catholic church has hidden and protected its clergy from prosecution for sexually and physically abusing countless children.

Make no mistake about it, the invasion of Iraq may as well have had a huge cross on a banner with trumpets blasting out "Onward Christian Soldier" as U.S. forces marched in with guns and tanks blazing away. Here at home faith inspired fanatics have traded in their robes and masks for suits with gold cross lapel pins and they wage a war of laws and public opinion that continues to systematically disenfranchise and terrorize LGBTQ/SGL Americans. Too many times this rhetoric inspires the random acts of violence, rape and even murder against queer people. And in the back of their minds the liar's sermons beat time to their crimes as they wreck havoc on the lives of the victims of these bastardized pulpits.

It's pouring down rain right now. And I wonder if this could be the tears of God and Allah, tears wept at the ugliness of the human condition, all the loss, the pain and the bottomless grief. I want to go and sit on the back steps and add my tears to this falling rain; to sit and grieve for all those who have lost their lives, homes and families in the name of God or Allah.

It makes my heart break to see what men are willing to do to one another in the name of their religions. Raping, imprisoning and murdering innocent people because they don't get their beliefs from the right "holy book". Terrorizing innocents whose only crime is that they are queer. The purveyors of these crimes are not holy men, these are not keepers of the light of their beliefs. These are murderers, bullies and terrorists; these takers of lives, exterminators of hopes and dreams.

We are none of us safe from these followers of God, Allah, etc. As long as there has been religion, there have been those who are willing to use violence to misinterpret it to their will.

There's a bumper sticker that says, "God save me from your followers". I'd like to amend that to say "Save us all from religious fanatics who use their faith to justify violence".

We must always advocate the right to freedom of religion, but just as ardently, we must call for the inalienable right of freedom from religion.