Gays are OK! Should gays be treated with the same respect as all other people? Conservative Christians and homosexuals are at it again. It seems they never get tired of this war. Only a few Christians have the courage to admit that they believe that all gays should be treated with the same respect as any other person! It seems that only a person with a certain number of gay and lesbian friends and acquaintances can realize the importance of knowing the people behind the labels and images created by society; and their experience building connections with people of diverse backgrounds and personal differences has been both inspiring and tremendously rewarding. Why do some Christians seem to need a stereotypical enemy, bogeyman, or group caricature to represent all that is wrong with the world? Perhaps some Christians, considering themselves representatives of Christ on earth, need some group to target as representatives of Satan. Perhaps they also secretly fear that they are not good enough for God, that they deserve to be punished in hell, that God does not truly love them, or that they cannot rely on such love since they most likely do not deserve it. This fear can lead them to project this view of themselves as evil and undeserving outward onto a group of demonized others. These people do not seem to believe that Divine Love is unconditional, that there is no need for anyone to earn it, that Divine Grace, like rain, falls equally on the just and the unjust - and therefore they cannot trust in the certainty of 'Divine Love almost as much as they rely on the certainty of Divine Judgment. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s and the nuclear arms race effectively stalled, new enemies have been taking the place of communist demons, including feminists, Muslims, Pagans, and gays. And so, unfortunately, the play is rewritten, including impressive flourishes depicting earthquakes and hurricanes as expressions of God's wrath at the presence of gay people in US society. In reference to the alleged biblical prescriptions against homosexuality, every reader of the Bible knows that theft is also condemned in the Bible; but you never see militant religious believers carrying signs that God hates looters, yet, you see them with signs that God hates gays... middle of paper... n simply because they were born human (as if any of us had a say in the matter). Today's society must realize that it cannot earn Divine Love and Grace because there is no NEED to earn such things; and they certainly cannot gain Divine Love or approval by hurting others. Divine Grace and Love are not transactions for which you need to pay. Society must also understand how it has hurt people by projecting its own insecurities and inner demons onto them, stop behaving this way, and know as people the very people who society says are "undesirable." Many also have a deep need for spiritual healing. Some need to spend more time observing the life of the natural world and accept that we were created with joy in life and that this can take many forms that were not understood by the people who wrote religious texts several thousand years ago. Change and variety are among the few constants in our universe, and humans are made to express infinite variety in every aspect of our personality, including our sexuality. This is how it should be if the human species is to survive and prosper. How else should one love, other than the way they already do as individuals??