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“I wasn’t a Christian”
Posted by Ted

I’d like to draw a little more attention to one of those squares.

(Executive Direcector of Reclaiming America Gary) Cass also presents another small-town activist, Kevin McCoy, with a Salt and Light Award for leading a successful campaign to shut down an anti-bullying program in West Virginia schools. McCoy, a soft-spoken, prematurely gray postal worker, fought to end the program because it taught tolerance for gay people—and thus, in his view, constituted a “thinly disguised effort to promote the homosexual agenda.” “What America needs,” Cass tells the faithful, “is more Kevin McCoys.”

Compare that to evangelical writer Tony Campolo:

Roger was gay; we all knew it, and we all made his life miserable. When we passed him in the hall, we called out his name in an effeminate manner. We made crude gestures, and we made Roger the brunt of cheap jokes. He never took showers with us after gym class, because je knew we’d whip him with our wet towels.

I wasn’t there the day some of the guys dragged Roger into the shower room and shoved him into the corner. Curled up on the floor, he cried and begged for mercy as five guys urinated all over him.

he reports said that Roger went to bed that night as usual, and that sometime around two in the morning, he got up, went down to the basement of his house, and hanged himself.

When I heard about Roger, I realized that I wasn’t a Christian. I was a theologically sound evangelical, believed in all of the points of the Apostles Creed, and had declared Jesus to be my Savior. But I know now that if the Holy Spirit had actually been in me, I would have stood up for Roger. When the guys came to make fun of him, I would have put one arm around Roger’s shoulder, waved the guys off with the other, and told him to leave him alone and not to mess with him because he was my friend.

But I was afraid to be Roger’s friend. I knew that if I stood up for a homosexual, people would say cruel things about me too. So I kept my distance. I had done better, who knows if Roger might be alive today.

I desperately hope that we have more Tony Campolos than Kevin McCoys. Specifically, I desperately hope that there’s more Campolo than McCoy in me.

Permanent Link · Posted 5/06/2005 :: 12:31PM in Religion · No Comments

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