Love your neighbor
I write to condemn a shameful ad published in the PDN, “Students Before Politics,” Nov. 2.
The ad’s sponsors claim to value people over ideology.
Instead they promote an ideology that identifies LGBT people as sinister agents destroying society rather than ordinary people striving to live meaningful lives in an increasingly tolerant environment.
The ad’s message is one in a long line of panicked gasps from people afraid of cultural change.
They should not be so afraid.
This cultural change asks only that we acknowledge two things: Good people come in all varieties, and expanding the circle of kindness and humanity to more people is a virtue, not a vice.
The ad’s sponsors focus on the corrupting influence of education, but their website reveals a total worldview, beyond students and politics, expressed in religious language.
This worldview shamefully masks prejudice with sacredness.
Its defenders call themselves Christians while supporting a system of domination condemned throughout the Bible, including by Jesus himself.
When people asked Jesus about the kingdom of God, he did not talk about himself, political beliefs, or cultural values.
He certainly did not encourage people to confuse their biases for God’s will.
Instead he told people to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength” and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus did not add caveats that love means paranoia and distrust or that your neighbors do not include anyone who makes you uncomfortable.
Jordan Huzarevich,
Port Angeles