As we said the Prayers of the People last Sunday (Form VI in the Book of Common Prayer), I realized that one of the petitions directly pertains to me, as well as many of my friends. As I spoke the response, “For the victims of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression”, I realized that I am a victim of three out of four of those problems mentioned.
Every day, I am subjected to the fear of those who do not, and do not wish to understand me; the injustice of those who would use the legal system to block my right to equality; and the oppression, at many levels, who would suppress who I am. It actually took me a very long time to understand who I am, myself, because my upbringing taught me that a lot of this fear, injustice, and oppression were all the right things to believe. Thankfully, I grew out of such thinking and learned to think for myself.
Fear
Being a victim of fear does not necessarily mean you are the one who is afraid. Rather, it can be that others’ fear is being imposed on you. Fear has been and is being used to fuel the opposition to equal rights for gay and lesbian people in our nation. In my humble opinion, it was fear and outright lies that won Proposition 8. It was fear that the defendants in the Prop 8 trial used. Each time fear is used to promote a belief, there is something wrong either with the belief, or the state of mind of the people promoting the belief. Unfortunately, we often exploit our children to get our way. If people think children will be in danger, they will vote the “danger” away. This is one of the tactics used continuously in the fight against LGBT equality. If you must use fear and/or lies to get your point across, or to win your campaign, that means you cannot win your case on its merits. Inequality equals injustice.
Injustice
I pay taxes and I work hard. I volunteer in the community and I support charitable organizations. I worship our God through the Christian faith as I understand it. I am an open-minded person who understands that people have differing points of view. As a pluralistic society, we must take a step back and realize that our own beliefs are not necessarily our neighbors’ beliefs. However, that does not mean we can ignore the Great Commandments of loving the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength; and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Where was it that Jesus said to love only those who agree with you?
When you use your own ideology or your own belief system to impose your way life on society, or even just a segment of society – indeed, even a single person – you ignore the true meaning of justice. When a segment of society is relegated to the world of injustice, those people become the victims of oppression.
Oppression
When you are told you will not be afforded the same rights as everyone else based on your nationality, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, maybe your accent, or your religion – among other possible attributes – then you are the victim of oppression. There are those who tell me that I should not be able to adopt children. There are even those who believe I present a clear danger to children and should not even be able to work with them! I have been told, in not so many words, that my seven years of service in the United States Navy was not actually honorable (I was not a victim of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; but right wingers have implied my service should not count based on my sexual orientation).
For seven years I was part of an organization that forced me to remain silent about who I was – that is the epitome of oppression. Still today, service men and women must continue to serve in silence. Many states in the Union still deny LGBT people protection from discrimination. In other words, you can legally lose your job for being gay in some states. Many people never want to see the day where everyone in this great nation is able to marry the person whom they choose to marry – the person that they love. I am not saying that people do not have the right to feel that homosexuality is wrong – we all have the right to feel whatever we feel. I am saying that trying to force people to live life according to your personal set of morals is not acceptable.
All of these issues are protested against, taken to court, and the activists never give up. They never give up because they recognize the oppressive nature of all of this. Straight people standing up for gay people, Citizens standing up for non-Citizens, the rich standing up for the poor – there are so many examples of how different groups try every day to fight oppression.
Prayer and Prayerful Actions
Two of the ways we, as the Church battle oppression is through prayer and prayerful actions. Prayer is a powerful thing and should not be dismissed. Through corporate worship, we unite our many voices and send our prayers up to God as one voice. Just as the seraphim continually sing God’s praises in one great chorus, so do we pray to him as one Christian voice. We do this through the Mass, the Daily Office and other services of worship.
Fear, injustice and oppression are also fought through our actions; we show people love and support and recognize their dignity while making sure we show them respect, regardless of who they are or what they look like. We proclaim to the world that we welcome you and love you, simply because you are you. We pray for those who hate us and offer them the same support and love, even when they refuse to accept it from us. We do this because our Savior commands us to do it. We lift up our voices and join the community in protests – prayerfully and peacefully; we stand up for what we believe is in the best keeping of our faith. We do what we believe our Lord himself would do.
Joy, Justice, Liberation
When we pray for the victims of fear, injustice, and oppression, we must remember that we, as followers of Christ, must do our best to change fear into joy; injustice into justice; and oppression into liberation. We have succeeded in the past and we are gaining ground now. I am confident that through prayer and prayerful action we will continue to make huge strides in bringing God’s people together while we share this planet.
Don Mitchell
