The GLBT Need for Nonviolence

[Joe Brummer]

The GLBT Need for Nonviolence
by Joe Brummer

Lots of people who stop by my website either leave comments or email me their criticism of using nonviolence as a method of change against our adversaries. One writer on a web forum about gay rights I visit once in awhile named Matthew, even said we need to fight them with the same fire. Matthew rejects the idea of nonviolence and says that not fighting back with the same fire will leads us to the death camps. The anti-gay posters on that site just rip him up. Why? He is using violence and hate speech to fight hate speech. It breaks my heart each time I hear this. I believe on every level fighting them with the same fire does nothing but give them ammunition against us. Nonviolence is not passive, it is an active way to fight hate speech without using more hate. Nonviolence means actively going out there and saying, we will no longer accept this hate and let them keep it.

The whole idea of nonviolence is to never fight back with hate, but to answer their hate with love. “Get Curious, not Furious” as my friend Janice Demurjian would say. I realize completely how nuts it sounds to so many people who are angry and tired of hearing the bigoted, misguided and mostly insulting language used against us, but use love. I am not talking of some mushy love thing, but the disinterested love of Agape. The religious right speak of us as a “thing” using terms like “The Homosexual” or the “agenda” or “The Gay” like we are not humans. It is hard to respond in love to that hate, but truth be told, we must not respond to them in anger for it shows them we are not “things” but humans with feelings and lives who can be courageous. It is easy to just snap back with a witty comment or sarcasm, but it is the easy way out and just does more damage. Answering with love and patience disarms them. If only one of us is being hateful, and it isn’t us, well the world will finally see it is them.

Somewhat like school yard bullies they are looking for a fight under the guise they want to “help” us out of homosexuality. When we respond to their tirades with our anger as hate, they use it against us to show how “intolerant” or “violent” we are. Responding with anything but love just gives them more fire power at us. Case in point would be “Americans for Truth”. Peter La Barbera posts the angry emails he gets from pro-gay people as “Hate Mail” and uses it as an example of how hateful we are. He has gone as far as to have a category on his blog titled “Homosexual Hate”. The best we can do is never give him a damn thing to put in that category.

DL Foster, an ex-gay minister from Atlanta, also post his emails from angry pro-gay supporters. He uses them in the same way. He posts the emails and then publicly ridicules the persons who wrote it. You can see that it just becomes a vicious cycle spinning around and around. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best when he stated:

“Nonviolent resistance avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.”

We cannot change people like Peter La Barbera, DL Foster or James Dobson, we can only change our response to them. The Civil Rights movement got amazing gains through the use of nonviolence. Gandhi lead India to freedom from British rule though the use of nonviolence. Now, more than ever, as the battles have moved to our pulpits, our State Houses, the Internet, we need to answer their hate with relentless love so the hate stays with them and never makes it back to us in the form of violence.

I leave you with an old Cherokee story a grandfather told his children:

“A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One wolf is evil — he is fear, anger, envy, sorrow, greed, regret, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority and ego. The other is good — he is love, peace, benevolence, joy, generosity, hope, humility, serenity, kindness, friendship, empathy, truth, sharing, compassion and faith.”

“This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too.”

[The grandchildren] thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”