LGBTQ and MEETING ALL THE REQUIREMENTS

LGBTQ and MEETING ALL THE REQUIREMENTS

A church full of white sheep. One of them speaks to an LGBTQ rainbow sheep, “I know… I just don’t get it. You meet ALL the requirements and you STILL never get chosen for any leadership roles.”

From decades of working within a certain system, the church, I discovered a painful truth:

No matter how many well-intentioned people serve a system, somehow they together with it make life difficult for those they disagree with or have an issue with or just don’t like.

Systemic evil doesn’t arise from any one person but from the structures within society that people help build and perpetuate.

I’ve experienced this when I worked for a certain ministry. I was fired on legal grounds, “insubordination", even though it was fabricated. Not any one person could be held accountable. But certainly every one in leadership was to blame together with how the ministry functioned. Many factors worked together to have me removed because I challenged the system I believed was incredibly unhealthy and even harmful to its employees. 

It’s the same with this LGBTQ sheep. Let’s say they’re in an “affirming” church. They meet all the requirements for leadership. Yet, for some strange reason, they always get overlooked for leadership roles. No one can figure out why. But THEY know why. THEY know the leadership as well as the system conspire to prevent them from participating in leadership because of they are LGBTQ. The church could never be charged with discrimination because they admit the LGBTQ sheep and even allow them to request consideration for leadership roles. All the rules are followed. But, somewhere down the line, with a series of micro-discriminations, they get bypassed once more.

Know what I mean?