Till recently, this was not at all an uncommon view among even mainline Protestants and Reform Jews, and it is still a common view among probably a majority of Catholics, evangelical Christians, and so on; and some denominations, like the Episcopalians and Anglicans, whose leadership embraced gay men and lesbians as equal members of fellowship, are continuing to have a sharp debate within each denomination, which may lead to a split. So, change of religion is work in progress. But, if gay and lesbian Episcopalians, for instance, had said, "Hell, the change is too slow, so I'll just say goodbye to my church," even the changes that have already happened in the Episcopalian Church would not have come about. The same goes for women and religion. And the same, ultimately, goes for other voluntary (e.g., political parties that go beyond one-identity parties) and semi-voluntary (e.g., nations) associations.
> Q: Do you want to revise that view?
>
> TR: My point is I am not going to revise that view.
> It's not in my y'know, it's not my ... I cannot do that.
> I'm not the Prophet to come to say - but what I have
> to say here - it may be not the divine project, and we
> may say, I may say as a Muslim I am not going to
> promote homosexuality. But I have to respect
> homosexuals. And this is the point here - I may disagree
> with what you are doing, but I respect who you are.
> And it's exactly what I'm asking the people to be with me.
> You may disagree with me praying 5 times a day,
> but I'm asking you respect. So we may not agree
> on what is the objective of our life and the way we
> are conducting our life. But we need to build this on
> deep, permanent respect out of knowledge.
> So I am working with homosexuals
> on different fields, projects.
A majority of people in the world have yet to get to even this point, of mutual respect for persons despite disagreements over beliefs and practices, regarding people of other sexual orientations and/or religious faiths. Should we write off much of the world on account of that? To take more concrete examples, many (or perhaps all) of people who are held in Guantanamo, undocumented Mexican workers exploited or deported, etc. in all likelihood have a view that is more negative than Ramadan's toward GLBT individuals (if the topic occurs to them at all -- some may not have even thought about it). Should we say that they don't deserve our solidarity because of their view of GLBT individuals, and we have a better chance of building solidarity with upper-class, out-and-proud GLBT individuals of the West, regardless of their views about other issues? -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>