” … I feel I can no longer
associate with a religion that does not perceive LGBT rights as a true
social value,” Rayshel said, adding, “I, as a gay man, find it offensive
that my same-sex attraction is primarily summed up to a sex act or a
perceived notion that I over-emphasize my sexuality which is seen as
destructive and self-indulgent.”
Sean Rayshel in The Bay Area Reporter, 4 June 2015.
Is the Bahai Faith “a religion that does not perceive LGBT rights as a
true social value?” At the practical level, that is true except where a
Bahai makes it clear that they do not discriminate and that their
communities do not discriminate. For the present at least, the Bahai
community has something to prove in this respect.
Because of the dominance of the perception of discrimination within the
Bahai community, I have to constantly state first that I am for equality
for gays and lesbians and only then state that I am a Bahai. Otherwise
the person I am speaking to is put off from the beginning. I have so
many stories, so many encounters, in which people do a double-take and
tell me, “but Bahais don’t like gays” or “Bahais discriminate.” In the
Philippines, in the U.K., in New Zealand, in the U.S., in the
Netherlands … people have said things such as: “Oh what is the Bahai
Faith about, because when I read that you didn’t accept gays, I stopped
reading” or “So tell me more – I thought the Bahai Faith was
conservative” and “When I read about homosexuality being forbidden I
thought it was a fundamentalist church.”
I explain that I am as much a Bahai as the person who told them that
gays cannot join the Bahai Faith. Then they learn that the
discrimination is not embedded in our teachings. For me it is not so
much whether or not a seeker is put off but two bigger issues: that our
gay children are not tormented by impossible demands, and that our
community practises the essential Bahai principles of justice and
equality.
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