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This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.I really wanted to share a few thoughts that have been building in lieu of the recent Supreme Court decision ensuring legal recognition to homosexual marriage for all states, and which, in truth, I've wanted to say for many years.First of all, who I am and why I care enough to write this post. I was raised in a small town with a large church. My church is located predominantly in the Bible Belt and centered, most poetically, in the county of love - Love County, Oklahoma. Growing up, the church was a very important part of my life, as it still is today. I have many good memories of good people living their entire lives doing the right things by all people and in keeping with their faith. I grew up wanting to be like many of those good people and still admire many of them greatly.That sentiment stayed with me all the way into my adult life, when I joined the United States Marines. When I was 19, I left my new wife here in the states, when I was deployed to Iraq, where I prominently displayed my Bible on my foot locker. I was proud of my faith, as I am still. Iraq had a transformational impact on me, though, as it would for many people who physically participated in the war. Conflict made me see the world differently in many ways, as I then had to start viewing people differently than all the stereotypes that had been delivered to me and understand that the world was far more complex than growing up in small town America left me believing. That's the only real way that wars end, when people start seeing one another for who they are, accepting that and working together to solve bigger problems.One person, in particular, shook many of my own stereotypes and prejudices I was not aware I had. That first deployment, I left a comfortable home with my wife to live with eight smelly other guys. We went through the war together and, in spite of our numerous eccentricities, life-long bonds are made in tents like the one we shared. Back then, we also lived under the punitive Clinton era Don't Ask Don't Tell doctrine, which for the military meant that gays were not allowed to serve openly, which unbeknownst to me, only really affected one of us. Though one of our friends told me directly, "You know he's gay right?" I never acknowledged that. "He's too normal," I told myself, "He's a Marine for goodness sakes." It was not until later, once we were all back home that I accepted that, yeah, he was probably gay. His name is Robert. Robert is gay. I had to deal with the fact that being gay really did not really make people what I thought it did. I had to accept that this was not really someone who I felt was a bad person who I needed to push away. He was still my friend, and more than that, a person I relied upon at one of the hardest times in my life. I could not hold a negative place for him in my heart, which made me wonder ... why did it feel like was I supposed to?Of course, as many people expected, growing up in the Church, there was the issue of homosexuality. It was not really a question as many people who do not go to Church, think it was. We do not have hellfire and brimstone sermons about the abomination of the gays. We never had meetings about dealing with the "Gay problem" and I have never heard of anyone holding hateful rallies. In truth, we did not talk about it very much at all as a Church. I can't remember my pastor ever actually mentioning it in any of the twenty years’ worth of sermons I've heard him preach. Remember, I grew up in a large Southern Baptist church in the heart of the Bible Belt. Where the issue of homosexuality always did center for many of us, I believe, were the small conversations around the home and social groups. It would always start off, more or less the same. Someone would mention something innocent, like getting flowers for Mother's Day. Then someone would make the unnecessary shift in the conversation to some way dealing with homosexuality, like mentioning that the town florist was gay. Then someone would always volunteer the same statement:"Well, if you ask me, I just don't agree with homosexuality."I don't ever remember anyone asking, not even once. I can't imagine how many times I've heard it, as I am sure many others reading would agree in having similar experiences. I probably heard it first from my grandparents' generation, then in the next generation, my own, and now, as a teacher in public school, it still somehow pops up in twelve year olds. This is not a religious act, in my opinion, but it does have a religious support system. It is codified within the Pentateuch, the foundational texts common to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all other Abrahamic religions. Our best Bible scholars feared losing that meaning because they feared losing loved ones to an eternity absent a communion with God. That original message was one of love and compassion. Yes, those first who opposed gay marriage, those who are actually building their beliefs on some reasoned biblical analysis, based their stance on something that was, for lack of a better word, compassionate. According to the view of the world, Christians once stood for love, care, and kindness. You may not have been one, but you respected their works. After that, though, something went very wrong.At some point, people stopped using the Bible to preach compassion and many people used the Bible to promote their own personal belief systems, cherry picking as it were. It was the same with racism, once. People who were racists used what little Bible was relevant to say things that, in effect, banned many from believing that a White person and a Black person were allowed to marrying. That is one example. Further reading, of course, slashed that notion with the context in which the passages were written, but, as any good blogger will tell you, most people never click through for the explanation to their questions regardless of faith, race, gender, or any other demographic. Old ideas have a way of sticking around. That said, it was not a very Christian thing to do, but people used faith to back up what, deep down, they wanted to believe.Then, the argument on homosexuality enjoying equality in marriage, to have it recognized by the state, became a serious debate. Here was a group asking for little more than to have love, the very thing we stand for most, acknowledged. Fundamentally, it was never more than that. If two women are married, it does not change our definition of marriage. It is no different for us than an Islamic man or certain Mormon churches allowing many women to marry. It is different people practicing the act of marriage differently ... which should not affect us or the way we practice the act. It certainly does not erode the definition of marriage, no more than the 50% divorce rate already has. If we showed strong marriages in the home, taught our children how to pick good partners for them, that's really the only way that the definition of marriage gets passed on to anyone. We did not think that way, though. At some point, many joined in the fighting just to vocalize their beliefs over whether homosexuality was natural or not. Many of us started to accept that several million people probably were not just pretending to be gay to annoy us, but the hardliners argued that the debate was more about religious expression and preservation. We thought that we could preserve our definition of marriage for a world outside of our church. Some of our community genuinely thought we were legitimately doing good, protecting homosexuals. Many others, though, really just wanted to preserve our ideals in hopes of emphasizing our relevance. Instead, they put us in an argument we really had a hard time justifying; first to the world, and then to ourselves. Where this led with the homosexuality debate was that it pulled those Christians, and by extension, the whole of the Church into a place it should not have been.No matter how you frame it, it is very hard to frame a debate about love ... against a stance of love. The average person is not a deep Bible theologian and would never see such a view as rational. It fundamentally looks wrong when one views this argument. Most in our own church members need to study years to understand well the thoughts that began our resistance against homosexuality. Nevertheless, time wore on. In that time, many people no longer wanted to fight this fight, except the two camps who really dug in their heels; those deep theologians who believed what they believed with a sense of compassion, and sadly, those who were merely bigoted, desiring only for an excuse to do harm to others. When one of these exists, the other will never be listened to. The presence of bigotry destroyed any moral high ground that others may have been working towards.Instead, it drove many of our good people away from the churches they knew and created embittered enemies, not only in our stance on homosexuality, but also against the whole of our community and against Jesus Christ himself. As the conflict wore on, the camp fighting for marriage equality grew, and some, reasonably grew angry. Hateful things were said back, which attracted yet more hateful Christians, joined as reactionaries to what they viewed as attacks on their own believes or at the very least, their rights to express themselves and their rights to freedom of belief. I'm not saying that all of those people were bad, but in my honest opinion, if you were to put all the reactionaries in a room with all those who began the debate from deep theologian's viewpoint in another, the reactionaries would have more bigots in them. Time wore on still, and the conversation devolved where more, and more, and more of our beliefs were communicated by fewer Bible scholars and more angry people who knew just enough that they believed they had a right to be hateful. After a few decades, it eventually descended to a point where people began making the most outlandish, most unwholesome, most unGodly attacks on people, as in all people - homosexuals, the military, Nelson Mandela, every practicing religion, and also, every other sect within the whole of Christendom.For those not aware, I'm referring to one very particular group which has earned far more attention than they deserve, the Westboro Baptist Church. This is an organization I am loathe to call Christian, mostly because everything they stand for, everything they say and do, everything, everything, everything about them is opposed to the message of Christianity.For those who don't realize, the only organization which carries the signs saying "God Hates Fags" is one small church, said loosely, out of a small town in Kansas. This "church" is populated primarily by a single family, the descendants of Fred Phelps. Phelps, who many may not know, is a disbarred lawyer and is a master of the American legal system, as are several of his disbarred children. They've used their knowledge of the law to make a family career of attacking towns in mourning, namely those suffering great loss and personal tragedy. My own town was one. We lost a friend I knew growing up to the war in Iraq, a fellow Marine. They descended with their insidious signs as they did with hundreds of others who lost one of their own to wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. Their narrative was that, "because we live in a nation where Fags are allowed to live, God hates you and killed your son." Emotional and distraught, many people, rightful reacted violently. In other cases, whole towns fought to prevent them from being heard. According to another Supreme Court ruling, preventing both of these are illegal. Westboro has, however, made a practice of living off the lawsuits made against towns and individuals for a few decades, so they don't really mind it so much, in fact they welcome being discriminated against. They know they'll win the lawsuit. They've taken what essentially began as a nation's God given right to religious freedom, freedom of speech, and right to gather ... peacefully ... along with a cherry picked version of select passages and interpretations of the Bible, to make millions in an enterprise built off spreading hate and anger in strangers. There is nothing Christian about this. I know. It’s pretty sick isn’t it?Still, they began a conversation, one that painted Christians in a very negative light. In the popular view, they became the central emissaries of Christian values and belief systems to a culture that didn't know them, despite holding almost no following and being publicly condemned by virtually every branch of Christianity, most relevantly, the Southern Baptist Convention. Because of them, almost overnight, gone were the messages of Christians who sponsor the largest aide missions to third world nations as compared with any other demographic. Also gone were the mentions of Christians running food pantries, orphanages, or halfway houses for everyone from convicted felons, unwed mothers, drug addicts, or the poor. Christians never stopped doing these things. A couple from my Sunday School class continue to run the Southern Oklahoma Baptist Girls' Home. It is just that people like the Burns no longer get attention for the good works they do. People like the Phelps getting all the attention. Christians today are by far the largest charity donators in the world, but that is not how we are portrayed.If you watch modern media, (because who doesn't?) you'll see the shift. Take only one example, the recent release of the new season of Orange is the New Black. Do we all remember how Season 1: ended?B.D. McClay wrote an excellent synopsis on How “Orange Is the New Black” Fails on Religion.“Amazing Grace” is played against the hopelessness of the prison. One character declares herself “an Angel of the Lord” and tries to stab another to death with a cross. These moments are heavy with intimations of greater meaning, yet they never quite seem to mean anything at all. Much of this incoherence derives from Pennsatucky’s character and place as the show’s main antagonist. Uneducated, poor, violent, and passionately committed to a charismatic fundamentalism, Pennsatucky concentrates all the fears of the secular upper-class into one terrifying caricature.Pennsatucky’s religious belief was initially faked in order to gain a more lenient sentence, but at some point her fake faith became real. We’re never really told how or why that happened, even though genuine faith arising from such a cynical beginning would represent something rather surprising.No other character is as flat or lacking in humanizing qualities, in a cast that includes a predatory corrections officer who extorts sex from inmates and sells them drugs. In fact, Pennsatucky is such an aggressively terrible character that even the Onion AV Club, when reviewing the show, singled her out as its big weak spot.McClay continues by making very good arguments around the symbolism of Pennsatucky:The show seems aimed at an audience of Piper Chapmans: upper-middle-class, very educated, largely secular. They aren’t friends with Pennsatucky; they don’t know anybody like her. Pennsatucky might be their waitress, or sell them some snacks at a gas station. But that’s about as close as their world and hers will ever come to touching. So it doesn’t matter, really, that none of these things about Pennsatucky make sense. They aren’t meant to make sense. They’re meant to be frightening.What makes Pennsatucky so threatening, as a character, is not even necessarily her religious belief as much as her lack of education... She is very stupid, we’re told, repeatedly. So stupid, she believes in faith healing. So stupid, she mixes up the first and third amendments.You might notice that none of these are signs of actual stupidity. They are signs of class and education. And yet, an uneducated nature here is a kind of moral failing. Every other character reads, but Pennsatucky sticks to her Bible. She refuses to try and raise herself up in a comprehensible manner. And that refusal, too, makes her frightening.The series finale depicts, with no room for creative misinterpretation, a fanatical Christian, irrational and animalistic, proclaiming her status as the divine "Angel of God" and dressed accordingly, attempting to literally murder the main character with nothing else but a sharpened crucifix, only to be violently beaten back by Piper. Following what had to be the simply most hate-filled depiction of any demographic since Buffalo Bill's depiction of transgenders ...I had to ask why, if Netflix is putting so much effort into portraying an enlightened and sympathetic account of the struggles of racial injustice, socioeconomic class conflicts, and showcasing gay and lesbian story-lines that weren't just fanservice for post-pubescent boys, why they seemed to try so intently to portray such an extremely harsh misrepresentation of Christians? Secondly, why also did they choose to do so to the exclusion of all other religions - pointedly absent in the show?In the end, I guess it is just that we live in a time where it is acceptable to show Christians as being hateful, intolerant, and ignorant. This seems to be the case, in spite of the fact that such views are built on the same hate, intolerance, and ignorance of actual practicing Christians. They view Christians, like McClay stated, as being uneducated, lower class, and ultimately, falling back on their religion to serve as nothing but a psychological crutch because they can't handle the realities of this world or the greater universe it exists within. They do not believe we understand concepts such as the Big Bang or evolution. They are afraid that we all esteem to one day bomb an abortion clinic. Many even believe that none us have any deep level understanding of our own theological doctrine. They believe we are of a lesser intelligence and in the humanist ideology, which values personal growth as paramount, an uneducated nature is a kind of moral failing. They believe we are ignorant, and therefore, immoral. Because we are, in their eyes, both ignorant and immoral, we are relegated to a new intellectual underclass, that of the inferior and the irrelevant, often, the dangerous.Right about now, many Christians are feeling indignant. They're trying to understand why we being depicted with cruelty. It's questions we've asked ourselves many times. Do you want to know why Christians?It's because of us.We know we aren't bad people, but we haven't really given the world very many opportunities to see that have we? Think about it.Christians are, by nature, non-confrontational. Non-Christians may take this time to scoff because of all the hate they've seen thrown around in our name, but you need to think about it too. If you look at what our faith believes, our God, if everyone will remember, was a person who had the power to smite the entirety of the Roman Empire and the Jews who persecuted him with nothing but a whim. Yet, he chose to die on the cross, among the most miserable of human sufferings, for a deeper theological purpose of betterment for all mankind. Whether you think we are all superstitious or not, and that this is all just nonsense, fine, but that is how the God we believe in did things.That, ladies and gentlemen, is a pacifist. The vast majority of Christians are, too. They seriously are. What is so interesting about pacifists? No one notices them. They have their rituals, they perform their acts, and they do no harm. They may be the wisest and most educated people in the room, but when everyone is in a roar to show whose opinion is best, no one notices those who do not speak. Instead of being a part of the community, those best among us have isolated themselves because of this desire to do no harm. Because of this mentality, altruistic as it is, people no longer know who we, the broader population of believers are. Our louder members of the community, for better or worse, have dictated our interpretation for decades.More so than that, our humble attitudes and pacifism have isolated us from the rest of society. Now we have little power. We said to ourselves that the rich are corrupt and immoral, so our children grew up not wanting to be successful, to start businesses and give people jobs. Now, our communities are getting poorer, and we have less wealth to do good things. We have not participated in politics because, for years, we said amongst ourselves that politicians were immoral and liars, so the best of our children grew up to be anything other than politicians. We said to ourselves that the media was evil as well, so now our children did not act, they did not write, and they did not go out into the world to make names of themselves and represent us throughout our culture. Now we have no influence. In our absence, many people who lead us, who provide us services, and who represent us through news and entertainment aren't very moral people, by just about everyone's standards. Because of our isolationism, other Americans no longer know who Christians are and are left with nothing more than the stereotypes, caricatures, and hurtful memes. People no longer see us and say, "There is Jon, you can really tell he is a Christian because ..." They no longer view what we do that is good as being a Christian thing to do. It was just a good thing. They do see what we do wrong, or what we are portrayed as doing in news and fiction, as being representative of us, though.Many people might take this opportunity to grandstand, saying things like how we as Christians need to stop being so passive. We need to organize, and protest. We need to fight. We need to have revolution. We need a crusade. I'm not saying that. I think that's stupid. I think people like that are most of why we have such an image problem as a Church. As I said, our God, Jesus Christ, was one who practiced peace, who built and nurtured communities, who embodied love toward all people, and assuming his power to be all encompassing, infinite mercy towards his enemies. What I want is for Christians to go back to being the leaders in the organizing our communities and service to them. I want to see Christians returning to being a force in the volunteer networks; building homes, building businesses, working to feed the poor and the hungry, and caring for the children. It isn't that we aren't already doing these things, it's just no one seems to notice, because we, the quiet Christians are being drowned out by those who present a very different image of us.This is a fact we as Christians must accept and acknowledge. We know that there exists intolerant Christians and that these intolerant Christians have given us a bad name for a very long time. We know that there are those out there that make practices of being divisive and stirring up the emotions of people who give in to their lesser, unChristian mentalities. For many years, these people have led much of the conversations from living rooms, but it is the quiet people who never speak out that have had much they should have been saying. Right now, many of those intolerants are posting things on Facebook that, hand to God, a lot of other Christians can't honestly say they don't agree with.I want to really drive home why it really doesn't make sense for Christians to practice anything that the world could ever view as hostility, especially not the kind that seeks to classify a whole people group, isolate them, and attempt to punish them for being what they profess to be. An example of how we should do things is in the book of John chapter 4.In John 4, Jesus and his apostles were traveling through Samaria. The Jews regarded the Samaritans as foreigners and there was often hostility between the two people even though. This hostility existed even though they shared many beliefs, including sharing the same religious texts, the Torah, with some changes. As people, they were almost identical, but minor differences in belief drove the two cultures to isolate from one another and many to hate.While in Samaria, Jesus met a woman at a watering well. By most evidence we are offered on the woman at the well, she was probably a prostitute. According to a lot of people's moral compass and most other religions, the Son of God might consider himself better than a common prostitute and a Samarian one at that, with their apocryphal texts. What did Jesus do? He asked the woman to share her water, breaking the custom of not speaking to someone who was all but shunned in her own community. He spoke to her, knowing full well who she was, as though she was no different than any other person. He did not treat her as if she was lesser, but treated her with kindness, compassion, and like anyone else - with love. That should be our example on dealing with people who we disagree with, who are different, or who we do not understand.At some point in the background, there started being a hateful undercurrent of people who speak very loudly, and carried a lot of influence, and though they could quote much of what the Bible says, and some may even have firm understandings of their doctrine, they did not applying the Bible's meaning as Christians should. Their words were those of love, but their actions were hateful. Their mentality was hateful. Their numbers grew and their rhetoric slipped into what everyone else was saying, as well. The message of love was gone.That is the real reason we lost. You cannot argue in the name of love, against those arguing for recognition of love, with people who are being hateful. How else can anyone explain how a collective body that accounts for 83% of the nation loses to a population that accounts for no more than 4?The truth of the matter is that when we started sounding more like this man, being compared by others to this man; when we, even in the smallest way, started seeing things from the point of view this man ...more than this man...something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.I'm not saying that we as Christians should fight against those who fought against homosexuality. We shouldn't "rise up" and throw them out of our churches. That isn't what Jesus would do either. It's important that people remember that in this story, everyone believes they are doing the right thing. What I am saying we should do, as a Christian community, is take this situation for what it is, a loss. Like a loss in war, it doesn't make sense to keep throwing soldiers at a battlefield where we have lost all strategic ground. When armies do that, when they dig in and keep throwing away people and resources for some victory in the name of pride or saving face, they lose the war. When wars are lost, the losers no longer get to be a part of the history, which will be written in the future. That's the fate we are looking at if we continue this fruitless effort against homosexuality. Our war should have never been about defeating homosexuality. That was a battle we fought too long, and lost control of ourselves in the act ... losing far more than we ever should have: our sense of ourselves and our place in the community. Now, we need to focus on a much larger war, one for the future of our faith and the way in which our children will live.Instead of fighting, we need to get back towards rebuilding our heritage and our status in the community. If you want to see a positive change in how Christianity is viewed outside of the churches, we have to be a part of the society that no longer understands us. We have to be at the community functions, the dances, the meetings, and even the bars, enjoying ourselves and being a good example to others of what Christians really are. We have to be volunteering, serving food and serving others, not because it looks good on a college application, but because it is what Jesus would have done. Most of all, we must do no harm. There are many times in which communities clash on values, all communities disagree, but first of all, we must do no harm. The world is watching.Second, and this is incredibly vain I know, but we have to prove the good works we are doing. Frankly, we've failed in that we don't provide evidence of our good works. Bragging is frowned upon in our ilk. Remember, humility is one of our greatest virtues. Now we have to do something very strange for us and let the world know what we are doing. What's that thing people say?"Got a pic? Didn't happen."If you have any interest in showing Christianity to be a force for good, we have to showing the world the good we are doing. You have to blog, you have tweet, you have tell your friends on Facebook, you have to be on Instagram showing the world our morality in practice. At the point when Christians are doing so much good by their fellow man, and the evidence of their works is so unavoidable to behold, when absolutely no one can say that they are unaffected by the work that average Christians are doing, than no one can be allowed to portray us like bigots. It will not be socially acceptable to be so hurtful to people who work to do so much good. At the point when atheists start writing letters to Netflix saying things like, "I know Christians and what your show said about them is messed-up ..." that's when you know we've done good in this world.Today, we can't say that. Today, we are called bigots because a few of our community are bigots. We are called hateful because a few of our community are hateful. We are called corrupt because a few of our community are using the church to further their own aspirations, their own agendas, and for many, to justify their own very unChristian beliefs and prejudices. We simply haven't shown them any better, and that is something I lose sleep over. We have to do better.Frankly, I'm happy that my team lost the fight on Friday with the Supreme Court ruling. I know that people will fight it, but I wish they wouldn't. I want the fight to be over. I want for my community to accept this as a loss and leave this fight with grace and dignity. We have to accept that in fighting against homosexual equality in marriage, for whatever reason, the culture we live in and the history being written is one which will remember us for our hate and intolerance, the most unChristian traits imaginable. More than this, I want the fighting to end so that our nation can work towards healing and work together - everyone - towards building a stronger, more loving America. I want us to put this fight behind us so that we can work together to face much, much bigger problems that we have ignored for so very long in dealing with our internal strife.To make my point, there was something else that happened on Friday that few people seemed to actually notice because the eyes of the world were on the Supreme Court and the celebration that ensued. Many may be unaware, but dozens of people were killed on Friday in terrorist attacks spread across three separate countries; France, Kuwait, Tunisia. The day was called by Vox news "The Global Day of Terror". One incident involved the violent beheading of a Muslim’s boss, another targeted vacation goers, and the third involved the bombing of a Shiite Mosque in the middle of services, killing many worshipers. A fourth attack involved a full-scale military assault by Somalia's al-Shabaab against government buildings of the African Union. As I write today, Egypt's leading state prosecutor was also assassinated by a car bomb attack in Cairo. Save for the attack in Egypt, all of these events took place on Friday, a day which happened to fall on the one year anniversary of the organization calling itself the Islamic State declaring itself the global ruling authority over all Islam, as well as the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.Here, I am going to speak on something I am much more qualified to be writing about. As an Iraq war veteran, I've dedicated a great deal of time and energy towards communicating to people why that war happened, what the major elements of conflict was about, and the mentalities behind why the fight continues. Over the last year, much of my work has been about communicating the danger of groups like the Islamic State, not only to American interests in particular, but to universal global freedom and liberties.Below are pictured the states that have made against the law the practice of apostasy. Apostasy is when someone leaves their religion for another, or if they leave practicing religion altogether. While I as a Christian lament anyone leaving the Church, I understand it as a necessary freedom to preserve free will of those in the Church. Free will is a cornerstone of both a true acceptance of Christianity and of the protection of religious freedom. In most Middle Eastern countries, however, and those nations which consider themselves Islamic nations, such as in the far west of Africa and the far east Malaysia, it is a common practice to outlaw followers of Islam from leaving their faith. These laws can be punishable with anything from state sponsored fines to public executions. In tribal regions, the punishments can be much more inhumane, to the point of banishments, brutal maimings, or, I'm sorry to say, much worse.Along with this is the Middle East's view towards homosexuals. In many parts of the world, the fight for gay and lesbian equality is centered on the lines of being publicly recognized. That was all the American decision was about. In many other nations around the world, it is much more about one's very right to survive. Areas in black are nations where being gay is a crime punishable by death. In some of these places, simply being accused of being a man loving another man can be something that literally separates a person's head from their shoulders. Throughout regions controlled by the Islamic State, there have been numerous reports of people being punished for being gay by being strapped to chairs, carried to tops of five story buildings and thrown from the balconies in front of crowded squares.There is a reason that I am making this point that is more than just pointing a finger at Islam. The future will be much worse than it even is today. While I don't agree that sentiments that Islam is any more peaceful religion than any of the others, the Islam of today is transforming and it is doing so in a way that will threaten all people's God given rights, especially those who happen to be a Muslim today.This transformation began with the Wahhabi movement, an ultraorthadox Sunni sect, which began in the Arabian Peninsula around the time of the American Revolution. It had a radical transformative effect on the politics of that nation, which is itself the seat of the Islamic culture. It had little impact on Muslims outside of Arabia until around the 1950's. In Algeria, during the civil war between native Algerians and the French, hardline Muslims adopted Wahhabi ideology, and separatist terrorist practices, to force Algerian Muslims to their way of thinking through violence, intimidation, and through the murder of moderate leaders within their faith. They had minimal effect in that conflict as far as gaining a fierce Muslim following for the sake of Islam. Over the next few decades, ideologues from Egypt and Pakistan also contributed to the fundamentalist assumptions within the movement and then in the 1980s, the movement gained real steam in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet Union. Mujahedeen, Muslim warriors, came from across the world to fight the Soviets. In doing so, they created a new class of Muslim not seen since the last of the jihads, which marched through Europe more than six hundred years ago. From them was born Al-Qaeda which bore and the Taliban, influenced the creation of Boko Haram in western Africa and al-Shabaab in Somalia, and most notoriously, lead to the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has now spread into Africa in Libya.Whatever you think of Islam, this theology is evolving the religion. They don't allow for other versions of Islam to exist within their lands and most importantly, feel it is their imperative to murder the Islamic leaders who disagree with them. There are many who ask the rational question that if Islam is, in fact, a religion of peace, where all the moderates are discouraging the numerous acts of violence. This is a good question, but those who ask do not understand the most important fact about the conflict within Islam - the moderates are being exterminated. It isn't like in the West. They do not enjoy universal freedoms of speech and thought. At one time, they were much better, but now those who do speak out face repression, and those who speak out enough, face death at the hands of some unknown assassin or suicide bombing. This is why the religion of Islam is transforming into something terrifying. From within, all good that existed within the 1.5 billion large people group is being fanaticized, converted, supplanted, purged, or systematically exterminated.As I said, it isn't like in the United States or much of Europe. Here, a writer, such as myself, can say things, which many people among his factions find distasteful, such as this article you are reading now. I, however, am not afraid. That isn't because I am necessarily brave; it is because I know that I live in a society that values freedoms like what I am showcasing more than it values seeing me dead for saying them. As an American, I am very proud of that. As a Marine, I am extremely proud I fought in the attempt to give that to others.That's really why I want Americans, all of us, to start looking at the Middle East as a region that needs to have a mirror held to it. Values such as equality, freedom of worship, and of speech must be made available to those regions, because what they are today may be nothing compared to what they become, and it will not just be the Middle East that will be affected. In a recent study, one research firm found that by 2050, the number of Muslims in the world might actually outnumber Christians. This can be explained easily by considering that Christianity does not punish those who leave it while Islam violently does. Such effects are exponential. Perhaps, if the religion itself were not enduring such a violent negative devolution, this wouldn't be a social disaster. When that happens, however, the decades, in some places centuries of effort toward ensuring ideas around equal rights for minorities and the ability to be heard will not matter. Democratically, these rights could wither away and in others, be stamped out in violent upheavals. No one will feel this more than the LGBT community, who will likely know an era of repression like none other in world history, perhaps comparable only to the Holocaust in scale and morbidity. I hope that no one wants that.As a Christian, I want those who are gay to live peacefully and enjoy freedom, prosperity, and happiness. I also want for those who no longer want to be Christian to be allowed to leave the Church, and go their own way knowing that they are still loved. This is free will and is fundamental to my faith. To be a Christian, I believe, it is necessary to enter into a relationship with God through the willing acceptance of Jesus. This decision cannot be forced, it cannot be coerced, and the absence of it cannot be prevented. It is a decision of the mind and cannot be enforced through the will of a government pushing the religious practices of a few. This is why I disagree with those who say that because the founders of the United States were Christians that the United States is a Christian nation. I believe people who cite this fact have missed the point. I believe the Founding Fathers saw as I do, that the only way to preserve the purity of a Christian's faith is to allow that person the freedom to choose, to learn, and to grow in Christ as the Spirit guides them to do so.This is why, as a Christian, I champion a secular state, one that provides for the basic needs of its people in a way that ensures their freedoms the most. Most nations don't have this freedom. Whatever you thought of a White House painted in light - be it a celebration or something that offended you - it is a good thing that we live in such a nation that could ever see it happen. It is a nation of good people that could allow such an event to take place. More so than this, it's a good thing that we live in such a nation where true freedom of belief, and freedom to live ensures a purity of the Christian faith.What I truly hope, is that those who fought so hard for the rights of homosexuals in the United States to continue advocating for all forms of freedom in the places that have it the least. Furthermore, I want Christians to peacefully join them in this struggle in hopes to ensure our faith is not supplanted by one intolerant of freedom. I want us to work together to stop a faith which uses violence and fear to spread to others as well as to free our own people living abroad under the yoke of repression as well as some, which are facing genocide.There, this is everything I've ever had to say about homosexuals and Christianity. This is everything I have ever wanted to tell my Church about my beliefs. This is everything I have ever wanted non-Christians; those of another faith, those of no faith, those not knowing what their faith is, and what so many of us believe, but have never really been able to. This is everything I have ever wanted to say about what should be done to help ensure a quality of life for all people. Finally, this is everything that I have ever wanted to say to the LGBT community, that there are so, so many of us who don't hate you, and want you to be happy, and want you to know that God loves you, as we should have told you long ago. This one point is everything I have ever wanted to say about all of it, that I am glad we finally lost the war, so that finally, finally we can move on, and hopefully, move on to challenges far more important - together.Thanks for reading!For more answers like this check out The Modern Christian by Jon Davis and follow my blog War Elephant for more new content. Everything I write is completely independent research and is supported by fan and follower pledges. Please consider showing your support directly by visiting my Patreon support page here: Help Jon Davis in writing Military Novels, Articles, and Essays.