Suppose you got on an airplane, sat down next to a random stranger, made small talk about your families, and discovered he has a husband back home. What would you do?
Correct answer: Nothing. Because who cares.
If it were me, I’d just say, “That’s nice,” before putting on my earbuds and falling asleep. Because there’s nothing more that needs to be said. Being on an airplane is like standing at a urinal: I acknowledge other people are really close to me but that doesn’t mean we have to have a conversation.
Ray Comfort, the Christian evangelist behind the anti-gay film Audacity, doesn’t feel the same way. For him, this situation presents a real dilemma:
Comfort explained to [radio host Jerry] Newcombe that he was initially reluctant to make a movie about homosexuality, but decided he had to do so after he sat next to a gay man on an airplane and didn’t know how to handle the situation.
“I was flying from Germany to London, sat next to a middle-aged gentleman,” he recalled. “I said, ‘How’re you doing,’ he says, ‘Good,’ I says, ‘You got a family?,’ he says, ‘I have a husband.’ It was like, ‘Oh. Where do I go from here?’ Do I say, ‘Oh that’s nice, tell me about him’ or what? And it was awkward.”
“Imagine what it would be like for the average Christian who isn’t kind of confrontational,” he said. “And I realized there’s a real need to show Christians how to relate to homosexuality.”
A man said “I have a husband”… and Comfort’s response was to create a film all about how gay people will fall down an elevator shaft and die? Good thing the man didn’t say he had a husband and an adopted son or Comfort would be working on a trilogy.
That stranger wasn’t advocating for LGBT rights. He wasn’t inviting Comfort to his gay wedding. He was responding to a question Comfort asked him. If Christians need help dealing with a situation that simple, no wonder they need a guidebook for everything else in their life.
(via Right Wing Watch. Image via Shutterstock)