Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar and Spiritual Friends
Since I launched our Organization’s TV show, in January 1994, representing a Group of Spiritual Masters, I have been defending the rights of the homosexual community, local and nationally – by satellite coverage for the whole country since 1996 – and even abroad (a short version of our program is cablecast in the US, since 1997). One can imagine, in the condition of a leader of a spiritual-Christian school of thought, the amount of opposition we have faced, in these 21 years… up to now!
Speaking of what Science states about the subject is almost a joke, annihilating any argument of whoever wants to encourage controversy. Since the American Psychiatric Association started to consider homosexuality as a natural sexual behavior in human beings, in the distant year 1973, very serious international organizations, such the UN and the WHO, and national ones, like the Brazilian Medical Association and the Federal Council of Psychology, began writing and publishing their documents in favor of the same idea - all this before the turn of the century!
Long before that, however, for decades, in the most educated circles and in the most civilized nations of the planet, it has become more and more uncouth and impolite to discriminate against gays, lesbians or bisexuals. More recently, among educated and well-informed people, the act of condemning someone for having a different sexual orientation from the majority is considered a crass demonstration of ignorance, little intelligence and/or psychological immaturity.
In the sphere of Law and the current legislations, wherever there are peoples of vanguard, the civil rights of the homosexuals and even equal civil marriage have shown equivalent progress, towards unquestionable acceptance.
However, I need to recognize publicly that when I had a religious marriage, in 2009, with my husband, Wagner de Aguiar, or even when we made our relationship official with the civil marriage, in the recent year of 2013, I did not imagine that the wave of transformations in this area of mores and individual liberties would get the speed and vigor, it has been showing, progressively, over the years!…
Defending my own cause? As a mature homosexual, being gay since childhood, I can state – speaking in behalf of psychology scholars of diverse schools of thought – that the greatest persecutors of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders are people who have problems with their own sexual inclinations or gender identity. On the other hand, the greatest supporters and campaigners for the rights of the LGBT community are often cisgender heterosexuals, great judges and politicians with a view well beyond the mediocrity of small groups found in all societies.
I congratulate the U.S. Supreme Court and the great leader of the Executive Branch of the most influential nation on Earth! With the enacting, at the federal level, of the right to same-sex marriage, an important step was taken for the principles of equality and liberty, not only in the United States, but also in the whole world, given the enormous power of influence the American culture enjoys on the globe.
The movement in favor of equal rights, in the field of sexual orientation and gender identity, is a historic and evolutive tendency that grows swiftly and irreversibly, despite the crying of some minority groups, engulfed in narrow minds, ignorance and a good dose of stinginess and unmentionable interests.
A SEVERE WARNING for those who declare themselves Christians!
Jesus NEVER condemned homosexuality!
Observe the arguments of homophobic people who base themselves on Bible passages – NONE of them are in the Gospels of Christ!
Jesus, who protected the minorities, condemned the prejudiced religious authorities of His time, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, whom He called hypocrites! This religious elite (which, by a curious coincidence with current events, was also political) not by chance radically followed the Old Testament, where we find these biblical passages used by the homophobic-fundamentalist of today, sacrilegiously declaring themselves representatives of Christianity. THEY ARE NOT! And, no matter how much they shout in contrary (as tyrants do), they will be called to account by the Christ Word of Truth and Fraternity, still in this life and… after death… only God knows how severely!…
Some people prefer to look like fanatics of traditional religions, like genocidal terrorists who kill innocent people and persecute minorities!…
We who are the legitimate Christians have only one possible course of action concerning the LGBT community – we should say YES to love and inclusion, and never to condemnatory behavior, a typical characteristic of those who were responsible for the Crucifixion of Jesus… and continue to be, until today…
But “woe to those by whom the stumbling-blocks come” – stumbling-blocks of hate, regression and blasphemy (here making the correct application of the words of our Lord and Master Jesus)!… They have no idea how ridiculed they already are, in front of well-informed and decent people, and how much their retrograde moral misalignment will quickly intensify with time, leading them to be marginalized in the heart of the societies, and, worse than that, to bear great responsibility, before Celestial Authorities, for trying to link the sacred Name of Jesus to their prejudice and diabolic initiatives to persecute minorities…
As for the afterlife… let’s leave it for the unfailing Justice of the Forces of God!…
Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar and Spiritual Friends.
Aracaju, June 26, 2015.