There's one type of discrimination that nobody seems to be talking about.

                Racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, you name it – there are a lot of words being bandied about nowadays to refer to prejudicial attitudes. But there’s one type of discrimination that nobody seems to be talking about and I want to change that.

                I’m black, I’m a woman, and I’m a Christian. And recently I have come to realise that those three parts of who I am open me up to discrimination on a regular basis. Fortunately more people are talking about racism and sexism than ever before (although not enough, I hasten to add) but nobody seems to care about discrimination against Christians. Apparently our human rights just don’t matter all that much.

                Now, I’m used to being discriminated against due to my being a Christian. That has been the case since I was ten years old at primary school. And although it’s not been easy, I accept that it’s part of the package. Jesus Christ told us: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.  Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

But whilst I’ve been used to people thinking me weird or disagreeing with my faith, I’m not used to being shut down – effectively not allowed to speak because of my views. And I’ve found that in the last few years it has become more and more common to think that Christians should put up with this. Well, sorry, but I don’t agree.

Particularly during my last two years at university I have found that there are a lot of people that quite like to shout me down or shut me up whenever I talk about my Bible-based views on contentious issues when asked. Usually a very confident person, I find myself feeling cornered by a horde of people who want to paint me as some outdated idiot or worse, someone who hates on groups of people. I’m not the only one being treated in this way.

Homosexuality

                My home church is one often referred to as a ‘holiness church’ and ‘Bible-believing’. That’s evident enough in the name: ‘Deeper Life Bible Church’. The Bible is the basis of everything we do. In the average DLBC service you probably look up around 50 Bible passages. We know our stuff.

                So it is with some confidence I can tell you the Bible’s stance on homosexuality. The Bible does not condone homosexuality.

“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9

                Please note that homosexuality is listed as a sin alongside fornication (sex before marriage), adultery, and theft. Homosexuality is not regarded by God as worse than these sins. It annoys me when people try to paint homosexuality as the worst of all sins. That is just not the case. “For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:22b-24.) Later in the same chapter, we see these words: “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” Sexual immorality refers to anything that goes against God’s plan for marriage, because God made sex for marriage. That makes sex before or outside marriage a sin, and it also makes sex between the same sex a sin. Just like any other sin, homosexuality is forgiven and forgotten by Jesus once a person surrenders their life to Christ. That doesn’t mean people do not struggle with temptation once they become Christians. Just as a man may admit to lusting after other women despite being in a happy marriage, a person may struggle with attraction to the same sex after becoming born-again. It is when one gives in to temptation that it becomes a sin.

We already know that Jesus spoke of a man leaving his father and mother to be “joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”.  No references to marriage in the Bible talk of a man leaving his parents to cleave to his husband, and the young women are never admonished to love their wives. So can someone please explain to me how a person saying that objecting to same-sex marriage on Biblical grounds is unfounded?

Even this meme is deemed offensive to some people. Isn’t telling people that espouse the view above that they should take this off their pages doing exactly what they are asking not to be done – for their right to say what they believe to be taken away from them?

I have a lot of non-Christian friends, but I’d like to think they love me in spite of my being a Christian. I don’t drink: does that mean I hate or fear all people that drink? Nope.  

                I have a right to say what I believe, just as you have the right to say what you believe – as long as neither you nor I are spouting hatred. And I don’t believe that saying I don’t support homosexuality as a practice is spouting hatred. 

Sadly there are too many people who do just that under the name of Christianity and they are giving people like me a bad name. For instance, I was incensed when I read a story a friend sent through to me of a ‘Christian’ pastor telling his church that all homosexuals should be executed. You would be right to call this homophobia. ‘Phobia’ can be defined as a ‘strong fear, dislike or aversion’. I’d say calling for all homosexuals to be wiped off the face of this earth is demonstrating a fair amount of aversion, wouldn’t you?

               But to consider people like him on a par with people like me is utterly ridiculous. It would be as ridiculous and unfair as stating that all Muslims are terrorists. If doing the second is indicative of Islamophobia, shouldn’t the first be tantamount to Christianophobia? Wait, you think that isn’t a word. So does Microsoft Word. So did I. Well, I’ve got news for you! Christianophobia, or Christophobia, is a real thing! Just not enough people care about it, so no-one’s really talking about it.

Just because hardly anyone knows that Christianophobia is an actual thing doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I can give you numerous examples of cases that confirm it to be real.

I could talk to you about the attack on Christians at a Kenyan university by Al-Shabaab which left 147 dead, or I could remind you of the numerous attacks on Christians by Boko Haram in Nigeria, or I could talk about the terrorisation of Coptic Christians in Egypt, or the beheading of Christians in Iraq. But I think you’d agree without question that these are clear cases of anti-Christian sentiment. What you might never have considered is that right here, on Western shores, Christianophobia is rampant.

One quite recent case from here in the UK springs to mind. A Christian couple in Northern Ireland lost a court case over their refusal to make a cake with the words ‘Support Gay Marriage’ imprinted on it; the judge ruling them to have ‘unlawfully discriminated’ against the customer. In response to the court ruling, they stated: “We happily serve everyone but we cannot promote a cause that goes against what the Bible says about marriage. We have tried to be guided in our actions by our Christian beliefs.” They made clear it was the message, not the customer, that they had a problem with. I for the life of me cannot understand how this can be labelled discrimination. It’d be absurd to expect a halal meat shop to supply bacon for your bacon butty or a kosher butcher to provide you with sausages for a hot dog. So why doesn’t the same go for Christians who aren’t comfortable with carrying out a particular action because it goes against what they believe to be an important doctrine of their faith?

The Parliamentary Assembly within the Council of Europe has recently called for its member states to allow for the ‘reasonable accommodation of religious beliefs and practices’ and has warned specifically against intolerance towards Christians in the wake of recent events; (See http://www.lawandreligionuk.com/2015/03/02/the-council-of-europe-religious-intolerance-and-reasonable-accommodation/)  a case in point being the dismissal of a nursery worker who when asked, told a lesbian colleague of her views on homosexuality: ‘If I tell you that God is OK with that, I’m lying to you. But if I tell you that God hates you because of it, I’m lying to you’. (Hating people is not in line with Christianity, but sin is something we are called to do away with, hence the line, ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’.) Her employers also sacked her for her refusal to read stories about same-sex couples to children which conflicted with her faith. It is a human right to be able to practise one’s own religion, and to deny someone that right is by no means right.

I have another example of such a predicament unfolding closer to home. At my university, the senior research scholar at the theological college Wycliffe Hall, named Ravi Zacharias, was censured by our university student union for reportedly being ‘homophobic’ and ‘Islamophobic’. Now all that this man had said was that homosexuality was not part of God’s plan for human sexuality, and pointed out what he felt were the failings of Islamic teaching. He did not say anything that could be considered spouting hatred, he simply explained why he didn’t agree. It would be silly to call a Muslim Christianophobic simply for saying they don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God, because this is something that their religion teaches.

The fact is, calling someone an ‘x/n-phobe’ is a very quick and easy way to get them to shut up. And lots of people don’t like what Christians say and believe so they attach these labels to them in a valiant attempt to shut them up.

I don’t think that’s fair. 

Abortion

                

            Sorry if you’ve heard me go on about this already, but the time when a debate was scheduled to take place at my university entitled ‘This House Believes Britain’s Abortion Culture Hurts All’ was another clear case of shutting down a view that isn’t shared by the majority. It was ruled that the debate had to be shut down because of “security concerns, both physical and mental” of students, since in some women’s eyes, “my uterus isn't up for discussion”. Say what now? I am a woman and I am fully aware that should I get pregnant, (don’t worry, that ain’t gonna happen any time soon) it would not be just me that would be affected. There would be a father involved, family members, and of course the child. So to suggest that it’s simply me as a woman that would be affected by an abortion, to my mind, is frankly ridiculous. (If you’d like to read more about my views on abortion, click here.)

                I believe in the equality of the sexes and frankly I don’t see how being pro-abortion is obligatory in this stance. But there are lots of women who’d like to shut me and others down for not agreeing with them.

Another controversy, involving both the Oxford University Student Union and the pro-life society Oxford Students for Life, clearly revealed this. The student union, which is supposed to represent all students, decided that it would be donating £50 each year to a pro-abortion group. Speaking to The Oxford Student, one second-year undergraduate, who describes herself as a “pro-life feminist”, did not wish to be named for fear of being “vilified by Oxford’s pro-choice mafia” and said: “I don’t see why they need to formally declare an opinion. I am a female student at this University, and I am pro-life, and I don’t feel represented at all by our student union. They treat people like me as evil, immoral people, just because I happen to think that life begins at conception. I didn’t even go to the OUSU meeting about it because I knew I would just be shouted down and not listened to.”

                This is exactly the kind of discriminatory sentiment I am talking about.

Transphobia

                I’ve recently found those like me labelled as ‘transphobic’ and I’d like to address this matter to explain why I believe this is unfair. As I’ve already discussed, the word and suffix “phobia” can be described as “strong dislike, fear or aversion”, in this particular case to transsexual people, who have decided to undergo surgery to change their sexual characteristics.

                Not too long ago I attended a talk centred on whether or not the Bible oppresses women (I am confident that it doesn’t; for more on that keep your eyes peeled for a post from me) and I remember in the Q&A session which followed, the lady who had delivered the talk was asked about the Christian view of transsexuality. She talked of how most human beings are born with clear sexual characteristics which make them either male or female, and acknowledged that in rare cases there are those that are born without any clearly identifiable sexual organs or characteristics.

                She highlighted that most cases of those that undergo surgery to change their sex do so without there being any sign of intersex traits, but rather do so because they wish to live as a person of a sex different to that which they were born into.

                I’m not comfortable with people hailing this decision as self-affirming and I don’t think it’s fair to label those that feel the way that I do as ‘transphobic’.

                It is serious and deeply saddening that there are people that grow up battling with problems with gender identity. But I don’t believe that people offering ‘gender re-assignment surgery’ is the right way to manage the psychological trauma that comes with this.

                Let me put it this way: the sex you were born into is an integral part of who you are. Let me go further – it cannot be changed.

                As I’ve already mentioned, I am a young black woman. I am black. That cannot be changed. My ethnicity is a central part of who I am and I believe that God made me this way for a reason. The Bible reminds me that God has a plan for each of the creatures He moulded: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”. Being black is not easy but I love being so. Being a woman isn’t easy but I am more than happy to be a woman.

                Why should it be considered anything but sad that there are people that feel unhappy in the bodies they are born into? We live in a society where it is normal to be dissatisfied with our own bodies, as reflected by the rise in plastic surgery: more and more people just aren’t happy with the breasts, noses, bums and tums they were born with. This is not something to celebrate or see as normal – it shows a large degree of self-loathing in our world.

                A very topical case comes to mind when thinking about those that try to change their phenotypic make-up. Remember Rachel Dolezal, the leader of African-American civil rights campaign group the NAACP? Well, she was revealed to not be black, as she had claimed to be and presented herself as, but rather to be a white woman who had covered herself with fake tan and donned an Afro wig, as well as rejecting her white parents and constructing a black family for herself.  There was an uproar from people of all races when this was discovered. Why? Because here was a woman presenting herself as something that she wasn’t.

                The results are in and although Rachel Dolezal managed to pass as black, the unanimous agreement is that she isn’t black. She can identify as black, she can make herself look black, but that does not make her belong to the ethnicity of those of African descent.

                As a black person who finds herself and those of her race discriminated against time and time again on a racial basis, I could easily decide that I’d like to be white. I could go through the process of lightening my skin and reconstructing my facial features and change my hair but I would still not be white. More than that, attempting to change my God-given ethnicity would be snubbing the one I was born into. It would be saying, being black just isn’t good enough and being white is so much better. Maybe that’s what some would like me to think but it just isn’t true.

                Scientific research shows that the same goes for transsexuals: they can go through all the gender assignment surgery they desire, forming or removing breasts, changing the shape of their genitals, taking in hormones, but that does not clinically change them from male to female or vice versa (e.g. transsexual women cannot have periods or give birth).  A review of more than 100 international medical studies of post-operative transgender people conducted in the UK found “no robust scientific evidence that gender reassignment surgery is clinically effective.” Walter Heyer, a man who underwent gender reassignment surgery in the 80s to become a woman, changed back to a man eight years later and has since been alerting others of the dissatisfaction that so often comes with undergoing transsexual surgery. Numerous cases point to the alarming prevalence of suicidal thoughts and attempts amongst transsexuals. See http://waltheyer.typepad.com/blog/2013/11/20-regret-changing-genders-over-40attempt-suicide-and-even-after-surgery-a-large-number-remain-traum.html.

                As we see with so many other dilemmas, people are quick to offer a ‘quick fix’ without considering the very real harmful effects. In my eyes we would do much better to make people facing gender identity crises feel comfortable in their own skin, rather than encourage them to change into something that they can never fully be.

                It is true that there are people that are born with intersex traits. Perhaps the most famous person in such a position is the South African athlete Caster Semenya, who in 2009, aged only 19, was subjected to humiliating scrutiny by the mass media after winning the women’s 800m at the World Championships in Berlin. A gender test allegedly revealed that the athlete was born with internal testes and neither womb nor ovaries, yet was born with the female-determining XX-chromosome. She was cleared after a gruelling 11-month stagnation period of being allowed to compete with women. Despite having both male and female sexual characteristics Caster Semenya is a woman and the IAAF (the international athletics governing body) ruled it would be unfair to treat her as anything else.

                It would be ‘transphobic’ to wish that those that choose to undergo ‘gender reassignment surgery’ should die or to declare that they are not worthy of being called human beings. However I do not believe that saying it is better for a person to be happy in the sex they are born in is discriminatory. And I think it’s time people realised that saying so is Christianophobic; it shows a fear or dislike or aversion to those that espouse views that are in line with the Christian faith.

                Thank you for reading through to the end. I hope from now on we can agree to disagree, as the case may be, with no hatred involved. Much love, Ruth.